An heroic bishop : the life-story of French of Lahore

Ex.

CANADIAN

FRQN TftE LIBT^\RY OF

TI^ITY COLLEGE

THOMAS VALPY FRENCH,
First Bishop of Lahore, 1877 87.

IFrontitpiec*

AN HEROIC BISHOP

THE LIFE-STORY OF
FRENCH OF LAHORE

BY

EUGENE STOCK

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

3 V

3277
F7S7ST

1113

Printed in 1913

40736

PREFACE

AMONG the many distinguished men who
have been sent forth by the Church
of England as Bishops into the mission-
field, very few can be compared, for ripe
scholarship, large-heartedness and breadth
of view, entire sacrifice of self, and length
of service, with Thomas Valpy French.
Yet, for some unaccountable reason, few
of the leading names are less well known.
Writers and orators ring the changes of their
eulogies on Heber and Cotton, Gray and
Mackenzie, Selwyn and Patteson, Steere
and Hannington — great' men, all of them,—
and entirely ignore French, worthy as he
really is of a place among the foremost.
The admirable biography of him by the
Rev. H. A. Birks, in two substantial volumes,
is long only because his career was so
lengthened and of such varied interest, and
because his letters, or rather the relatively
small selection of them printed, are so
delightful ; and it is now out of print.

iv PREFACE

In the following pages an attempt is made
to tell the story of French's life in briefer
form, in the hope that in this way the name
and the work of one of the noblest of modern
missionaries may become more familiar to
the Christian public, and that one more
brilliant example of self -sacrificing devotion
may be added to the many that have stirred
the heart of the Church.

When French was appointed to the new
Bishopric of Lahore, Dr. Westcott, then
Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, wrote
of the "joy and confident hope " such an
appointment inspired ; and when, after a
ten years' episcopate, he was resigning his
office in order to resume the life of a pioneer
missionary, Archbishop Benson wrote to him,
" Your very presence [at Lahore] has lifted,
and daily lifts, the mission cause into its
true position for the first time." Such
testimonies justify the present attempt to
make Thomas Valpy French better known
as one of the Church's heroes.

E. S.

N.B. — Any profits accruing to the author
will be devoted to missionary work at Agra
or Lahore.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
THE MAN ....... 1

CHAPTER II

His FIRST PIONEER WORK : THE AGRA

COLLEGE ...... 6

CHAPTER III

His SECOND PIONEER WORK : THE FRONTIER

MISSION 21

CHAPTER IV
AT HOME 27

CHAPTER V

His THIRD PIONEER WORK : THE DIVINITY

COLLEGE ...... 30

vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER VI

PAGE

His FOURTH PIONEER WORK : THE LAHORE

BISHOPRIC 46

CHAPTER VII

His POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN . . 69

CHAPTER VIII

JOURNEYS AND VISITS, EAST AND WEST .

CHAPTER IX

AMONG THE EASTERN CHURCHES . 95

CHAPTER X

His FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA . .105

CHAPTER XI
THE HOME CALL — AND AFTER . . .118

THOMAS VALPY FRENCH . . Frontispiece

PAGE

PREACHING IN AN INDIAN VILLAGE . . .16
A STREET SCENE IN LAHORE . . .84

TUTORS AND STUDENTS AT THE LAHORE

DIVINITY SCHOOL ..... 88

BISHOP FRENCH . . . . . .48

THE CEMETERY AT MUSCAT, WITH BISHOP

FRENCH'S GRAVE 120

vil

CHAPTER I

THE MAN

/^kXFORD has given the Church a noble
band of Missionary Bishops. Re
calling only a few of the more conspicuous,
we think of Heber and Daniel Wilson, among
the earlier in India ; of Williams and Had-
field, each with his half-century of labour
in New Zealand ; of the two missionary
martyrs, Patteson and Hannington ; of
the first English Bishops in South Africa
(Gray), Madagascar (Ke&tell-Cornish), China
(G. Smith), Japan (Poole), Rupert's Land
(Anderson) ; of still surviving veterans like
Copleston of Calcutta, Scott of North China,
Tucker of Uganda ; to say nothing of many
other distinguished Bishops in colonial fields.
But in the front rank of all must be placed
the name of French, first Bishop of Lahore.
Thomas Valpy French was born on New
Year's Day, 1825, at the Abbey, Burton- on-
1

2 THE MAN

Trent, in which town his father was vicar
of Holy Trinity Church for forty-seven years.
The Rev. Peter French was much respected
as a leading and successful Evangelical
clergyman. He was an able preacher, and
he accomplished an important work in
building churches and mission-rooms and
schools in the town and district. Mrs.
French was noted for the " sweetness and
gentleness " of her character, and indeed
was described as an embodiment of the
Psalm of Love in the thirteenth chapter of
1st Corinthians. Thomas was their eldest
child. The quaint, old-fashioned house in
which he was born, once part of a Benedic
tine Abbey, on the banks of the Trent, and
only separated from the bustling brewing
town by its own wall, was typical of the
future Bishop's own life, passed amid inces
sant and pressing occupations, yet marked
by a certain aloofness and ecclesiastical
quietism which made him breathe the atmo
sphere of the venerated past, even in the
environment of the urgent present.

It is recorded of the future missionary
that, from early childhood, he manifested

THE MAN 8

" his keen interest in the various deputations
who came to plead the cause of Missions,"
and " his carefulness to mention their names
in his prayers " ; and also that, at the age of
six or seven, he seriously began to write
sermons. After a short time at Reading
Grammar School, he went at the age of
fourteen to Rugby, then in the full tide of
its influence under Arnold. A school-fellow
of his there, afterwards a well-known London
clergyman, the Rev. G. P. Pownall, has left
an interesting account of French as a
Rugby boy. They two, and R. A. Cross
(now Viscount Cross) used to study together.
Pownall describes him as having been " wise
unto that which is good, and simple con
cerning evil," and as having > been some
what puzzled by Arnold's sermons, which,
despite their manly earnestness, did not
seem quite " the gospel " he was familiar
with at Burton.

In 1843 he went to Oxford, having won a
scholarship at University College. He took
no part in the burning controversies of the
time ; and the influence of John Henry
Newman, who was then nearing his seces-

4 THE MAN

sion, was on the wane. He taught in the
Holy well Sunday School, under E. M. Goul-
burn (afterwards Dean of Norwich). He
was a collector for the C.M.S., and he
formed (it is believed) a little missionary
union, one of whose members was A. H.
Mackonachie, afterwards of St. Alban's,
Holborn. But he was a thorough student,
and in 1846 he obtained a first class in
" greats," along with Conington, Bright,
and Ince — all of whom became Professors —
and subsequently won the coveted Chan
cellor's Latin Essay Prize, and was elected
Fellow of his college.

The call to the mission-field came to
French from different quarters and in different
forms. First, H. W. Fox, the pioneer of the
Telugu Mission in South India, during his
first visit to England addressed a breakfast-
party of men in Trinity College ; and Canon
Curteis (author of one of the Lives of Bishop
Selwyn), who was French's contemporary
at University College, and was taken by him
to that breakfast, writes that he il can
hardly doubt that that address made a
permanent mark " on his " sympathising

THE MAN 5

and enthusiastic soul." Then Fox, on his
return to India, wrote to French and begged
him to come out. " If God's promises be
true," he wrote, " the more men come out
the more men will He raise up to bless
the Church with, which out of its poverty
gives its best to His cause." Then came
a great speech by Bishop Samuel Wilber-
force, appealing to Oxford men to go
forth ; which French himself looked back
to in later years as having brought him to
the point. He and a friend prayed together
over it, and that friend, Arthur Lea, was
killed in a railway accident soon after.
" The one was taken," says Mr. Birks,
French's biographer, " and the other left,
and so their mutual vows of consecration
appeared to him doubly binding." He at
once put himself in communication with the
Church Missionary Society, and he was
thankfully accepted for missionary service
on April 16, 1850.

Then began a career remarkable as com
prising five distinct periods of foreign service,
every one of them occupied by distinctly
new and in a sense pioneer work.

CHAPTER II

HIS FIEST PIONEER WORK : ST. JOHN'S COL
LEGE, AGRA

TT^RENCH was appointed to educational
work at Agra. That historic city was
the capital of the great territory then called
the " North-west Provinces," now the
" United Provinces," comprising a great
part of the Valley of the Ganges. In North
India, the whole of which was in those days
comprised in the Presidency of Bengal,
Agra was only second in importance to
Calcutta. And it was already a city to
which attached deep missionary interest.
In 1811 a Baptist minister was sent there
from Carey's Mission at Serampore, but
was instantly sent back by the British
authorities, under a guard of heathen Sepoys ;
and on being invited again to Agra, merely
to be tutor to an officer's children, he was a
second time ordered back by Lord Hastings,

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AGRA 7

then Governor- General, who said that " one
might fire a pistol into a powder-magazine,
and it might not explode, but no wise man
would hazard the experiment."

But in the following year Daniel Corrie,
one of the famous Five Chaplains under the
East India Company to whom India owes
so much,* was appointed to Agra ; and he
took thither with him a remarkable convert
from Mohammedanism, led to Christ by the
preaching of Henry Martyn at Cawnpore.
This man, Sheikh Salih, had been master of
the jewels at the Court of Oudh ; and he was
baptized at Calcutta on Whit Sunday, 1811,
by the name of Abdul Masih (Servant of
Christ). A Corresponding Committee of the
C.M.S. had been formed at Calcutta, and the
Society had remitted to it money for the
employment of native Christian readers;
and the first of these to be engaged was
Abdul Masih. He was thus the first C.M.S.
missionary in India ; for no English Church
man had yet gone out definitely for work

* The five were David Brown, Claudius Buchanan,
Henry Martyn, Thomas Thomas on, and Daniel Corrie.
They were first called "The Five" by Sir John Kaye in
hi3 Christianity in Indict,,

8 HIS FIRST PIONEER WORK

among the non- Christian population ; and
although there were a very few German
Lutherans in the south working under the
S.P.C.K., no missionary was allowed by
the East India Company in the north,
i.e. in British territory. Carey's Mission
was in a Danish possession. Abdul Masih
worked zealously at Agra for several years,
and brought some fifty converts to Corrie
for baptism. He was ordained by Bishop
Heber in 1826, but died in the following year.
His portrait was sent home to Charles
Simeon, and it hangs in the C.M.S. com
mittee-room to this day. It is worth re
membering that the first Indian clergyman
of the Church of England was (a) a con
vert from Mohammedanism, (b) a fruit of
Henry Martyn's preaching, (c) admitted to
the sacred ministry by Bishop Heber.

Schools were opened and " readers " sta
tioned at several cities in North India,
notably at Agra, Delhi, and Cawnpore,
being generally superintended by the Com
pany's chaplains or by earnest Christian
officers ; but Agra was not definitely occu
pied as a mission station until 1838-40,

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AGRA 9

when three Germans appeared in India,
who had laboured in North-western Persia
under the Basle Missionary Society, but
had been expelled by the Russians when
the latter annexed the districts in which
they were working. These men, Hoernle,
Pfander, and Schneider, were engaged by
the C.M.S., and stationed at Agra ; and
they afterwards received Anglican orders
from the Bishop of Calcutta.

Meanwhile the great work of Dr. Alexander
Duff at Calcutta was opening the eyes of
missionary leaders to the value of Higher
Education on Christian principles, as an
evangelistic agency among the upper classes
of India. One C.M.S. missionary in the
south, Robert Noble, adopted Duff's method
and opened a High School at Masulipatam,
which in after-years produced a long succes
sion of individual high-caste converts, many
of whom became the leaders of the Church
in the Telugu districts. The Society was
being urged by friends in the north, par
ticularly by Mr. James Thomason, the very
able Lieut. -Governor of the North-west
Provinces, and his secretary, Mr. (afterwards

10 HIS FIRST PIONEER WORK

Sir William) Muir, to open a similar college
at Agra ; and they raised a large fund on
the spot wherewith to start it. But the So
ciety had no men suitable for the purpose.
Pfander was a missionary of the highest
class, but he was devoting himself to a
different kind of work among the Moham
medans, and English University men were
needed for the projected college. French's
offer came providentially in the nick of
time ; another offer from a Dublin gradu
ate of distinction, Edward Craig Stuart,
enabled the Committee to respond joyfully,
at last, to the appeal for men ; and the
Special Fund raised in connexion with the
Society's Jubilee in 1849 helped the Fund
raised in India to provide the means.

It is an interesting fact that the Vale
dictory Meeting at which French and Stuart
were taken leave of, on Aug. 20, 1850, in
the parish schoolroom of Islington, was
attended by, among others, Dr. Ludwig
Krapf, the great pioneer of East Africa
Missions, who was in England at the time
after thirteen years of toil and suffering in
the Dark Continent. So, just ten years

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AGRA 11

before, in 1840, the young David Living
stone had been present at the famous meeting
for the promotion of the Niger Expedition,
over which Prince Albert presided, only
four months after his marriage with Queen
Victoria.

French and Stuart sailed on September 11
in the East Indian Queen, which reached
Calcutta after an unusually quick voyage,
of course round the Cape, on January 2, 1851.
They at once proceeded up-country to Agra,
where they were warmly welcomed by the
Lieut.-Governor and his colleagues, several
of whom were devout Christians. Of James
Thomason himself, the highest encomiums
are on record. Sir Richard Temple, in his
Men and Events of my Time in India, writes,
" He was one of the most successful English
men that have ever borne sway in India " ;
" his life was a pattern of how a Christian
Governor ought to live." Under him were
trained some of the ablest of Anglo-Indian
civilians : among them John Lawrence,
Robert Montgomery, Donald McLeod, and
William Muir. He was a son of Thomas
Thomason, one of the Five Chaplains before

12 HIS FIRST PIONEER WORK

alluded to, who had been recommended to
the East India Company by Simeon of
Cambridge. Simeon's faith in getting Indian
appointments for Cambridge men of his
type, when the need was so great of godly
men at home, has indeed been abundantly
rewarded.

French soon lost his colleague, Stuart
being transferred to Calcutta ; and, on the
other hand, he gained a still closer com
panion, being married to Miss M. A. Janson,
a lady he had met at Oxford. Naturally he
was largely occupied at first in studying the
languages he would need if he were to be
an efficient Principal of the College. In
later days he became known in India as
" the seven- tongued man " ; and his ideas
of what was necessary may be gathered
from counsel given by him subsequently to
a young missionary :

" You must, of course, commence with
Urdu or Hindustani, so as to be able to talk
with your servants, to help in the services of
the church, and in the schools. You had
better give some six or eight hours a day to
that, and also spend two or three hours at

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AGRA 13

Punjabi, to be able to talk with villagers.
You should also try to give two or three
hours to the study of Persian, which you
will find invaluable in the schools, and all
your spare time to Arabic, so as to be able
to read the Quran."

The new college, named St. John's after
Henry Martyn's college at Cambridge, " with
additional reference to St. John as the
Apostle of Oriental Churches," was opened
in 1853. But a sort of beginning was to be
seen before that. Mr. Charles Raikes, the
Chief Judge at Agra, thus describes what
he saw :

" In a corner of the rising edifice, with
some twenty or thirty black boys round him,
sat the future Bishop of Lahore. The
weather was hot, the room small, the subject
a lesson in Paradise Lost. The contrast
between the highly educated Fellow of
University College and his little dusky flock,
between the sounding phrases of the poet
and the Hindustani patois of the students,
was too great for me. Surely, I exclaimed,
as I went out, this is a case of labour lost,
of talent misapplied, of power wasted. I

14 HIS FIRST PIONEER WORK

was wrong : that tie between teacher and
disciple, which in the day of adversity
proved so strong and so lasting, was already
formed, and was daily to draw closer the
bond of love."

From the first the college was successful
in attracting boys, although there was a
large Government College in the city. In
that institution the Bible was not taught ;
and intelligent parents of a superior class,
though they had no wish for their sons to
become Christians — and indeed no fear of
their doing so, — did wish them to learn
truthfulness and honesty, and the moral vir
tues generally ; and experience has shown
that it is always Christian teaching that
does this, even where there is no conver
sion. But French, of course, aimed at
conversions, and constantly prayed for them ;
and he soon discerned tokens of the Spirit's
working among his pupils. His boys, he
told the congregation when preaching in
the English church, knew Scripture better
than the average Oxford undergraduate ;
and some of them, he said, though un-

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AGRA 15

baptized, had " endured more for Jesus "
than any of the English in Agra. But he
longed to be training " the native apostles,
or at least the Tituses and Timothys of
India," and hoped that they might come
out of his first class of ten boys One of the
ten, baptized a few years later by Shackell
(a subsequent Principal), became the Rev.
Madho Ram, pastor at Jabalpur. It is the
general experience of these high schools and
colleges that, while few conversions occur
among the pupils at the time, many occur
in after-years, when the truths learned at
school come back with fresh force under other
influences. French himself, twenty years
later, far away in the Punjab, baptized an
old student of St. John's, who found him out
there, and came forward to confess Christ.
Another case was revealed in a letter received
by him in 1873. The writer had desired
baptism while in the college, but was in
duced by his mother not to come forward ;
and now, after twenty years, he had at
last been enabled to give himself wholly to
Christ and had been baptized. " One sow-
eth and another reapeth."

16 HIS FIRST PIONEER WORK

But French did not confine his labours
to the college. He eagerly used every
opportunity to make Christ known by con
versations with individuals whom he met
in various ways, and by itinerating in the
neighbouring villages ; and several con
versions were the result. In one year three
Mohammedan munshis were baptized, of
whom he wrote, " They have forsaken all
for Christ, and have suffered bitter re
proaches for His Name's sake." There was
at that time much earnest controversy
between the missionaries and the Moslem
moulvies. Pfander was untiring in this
work, and his books, the Mizan-al-Haqq
(Balance of Truth), Miftah-al-Asrar (Key
of Secrets), and Hall-al-Ishkal (Solution of
Difficulties), had a great effect upon the
Mohammedan mind. The public discussion
of 1854 is one of the famous incidents in
the history of Missions in India. The scene
was a striking one. The meeting took place
in the C.M.S. school, which was crowded
with Mohammedans sitting cross-legged on
the floor. On one side sat the Moslem
champions, and behind them a band of

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AGRA 17

assistant students ; opposite were Pfander
and French and their brethren. Piles of
English and German works, among which
Strauss was conspicuous, lay in front of the
Moslem disputants ; and the burden of their
attack proved to be the various readings in
the MSS. of the Scriptures. The points
adduced are familiar enough to even ele
mentary Bible students in Europe ; but
the moulvies had got hints of damaging
criticisms of the Bible, and had spared no
pains to search them out. Hints from
whom ? It was afterwards discovered that
they had been suggested by the Roman
Catholic Bishop and priests ! The discus
sion lasted two days, and, as might be
expected, both sides claimed the victory.
But not many years afterwards two of the
younger moulvies, who at that discussion
heard for the first time the Christian argu
ment put verbally by faithful servants of
Christ, came out and embraced the Gospel.
One was Moulvie Safdar Ali, who became
Extra Assistant Inspector in the Govern
ment Education Department ; the other was
Moulvie Imad-ud-din, whom we shall meet
2

18 HIS FIRST PIONEER WORK

again as the Christian preacher and writer
of Amritsar on whom Archbishop Benson
conferred the Lambeth D.D. degree.

In 1857 came the great Mutiny, which for
a time threatened the overthrow of British
rule in India, and in which hundreds of
English men and women and children were
massacred. For nearly six months Agra
was blockaded by the insurgent Sepoys.
Writing of the early days of the conflict,
Mr. Charles Raikes says :

11 1 must record the impression made on
me by the calmness and coolness of Mr.
French. Every Englishman was handling
his sword or his revolver ; the city folk
running as if for their lives ; . . . outside
the college, all alarm, hurry, and confusion.
Within calmly sat the good missionary, and
hundreds of young natives at his feet, hang
ing on the lips that taught them the simple
truths of the Bible."

" And so it was," he goes on, " through
out the revolt." While highly paid native
officials deserted to the enemy, the students
in French's college, Hindu or Mohammedan
though they might be, stayed where they

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AGRA 19

were ; and when the city had to be aban
doned, and all retired to the fort, they
still proved trusty friends. An incident
occurred when that grave step was taken
which has often been misreported. The
actual fact was that, when the Lieut. -
Governor who had succeeded Thomason,
Mr. Covlin, withdrew all Europeans into
the fort, the native Christians in the city
were admitted too ; but then appeared
the Christians from Secundra, six miles
away, entreating to be taken in. French
could not induce the officer at the gate to
admit them ; but at length, " on declaring
his unalterable purpose to stay out with
them if they were refused," the officer
consented to open the gate if a written
order were brought from the general ; and
this was easily obtained. And well it proved
that they were admitted, for the heathen
and Mohammedan servants had all deserted,
and these poor Christians were taken into
employment instead.*

* The mistaken report was that native Christians already
in the fort were to be turned out, and that French only saved
them by threatening to go out with them.

20 HIS FIRST PIONEER WORK

In 1859, French's health being much
impaired, he took furlough to England.
For a year and a half he served as Curate
at Clifton Parish Church. Then, despite
many remonstrances against his returning
to India, he sallied forth again, leaving wife
and children behind. " I trust," he wrote
to his wife, " the sacrifice we thus make of
some of life's happiest years, the years when
joy is intensest, may be graciously accepted
for His sake, who alone can put any worth
into our poor maimed offerings." It was
not, however, to Agra that he was now
bound. St. John's College had been com
mitted to other hands, and the development
was commencing which has since made it
one of the largest missionary institutions in
India. But French was to be again the
pioneer in a new enterprise.

CHAPTER III

HIS SECOND PIONEER WORK : THE FRONTIER
MISSION

the north-west frontier of India,
between the River Indus and the
Afghan mountain-ranges, lies a territory
three hundred miles long by fifty broad,
which is known as the Derajat or " En
campments." It is nearly conterminous
with what is now called the North-west
Frontier Province, this province having
been separated from the Punjab a few years
ago. Into it debouch all the mountain
passes between the Khyber to the north
and the Bolan to the south. By these
passes there continually come over into the
plains of India the trading caravans of the
Afghan mountain tribes, bringing goods of
all kinds from Central Asia. One city
beyond the Indus, Peshawar, had already

been occupied by the C.M.S., under the

21

22 HIS SECOND PIONEER WORK

auspices of Sir Herbert Edwardes, the bril
liant soldier and the hero of Ruskin's A
Knight's Faith, who was Commissioner at
the time. But the Derajat had never yet
heard the Gospel.

And now, in 1861, came the summons to
the Derajat. From whom ? From the Com
missioner of the district himself, Colonel
Reynell Taylor. Just as Henry and John
Lawrence had welcomed missionaries to
the Punjab, as Herbert Edwardes had en
couraged them to come to Peshawar, as
Robert Montgomery had invited them to
Lucknow, so now the ruler of the Derajat
called upon them to enter his district.
Reynell Taylor wrote to Edwardes, who
was then in England ; and Sir Robert
Montgomery, who was now Lieut. -Governor
of the Punjab, also wrote, warmly supporting
the appeal. The latter said : " We have
held the frontier for twelve years against
all comers, and now, thank God, we are at
peace with all the tribes. Now is the time
to hold out the hand of friendship and to
offer, through the missionaries, the bread
of life. ... I rejoice to see Missions spread-

THE FRONTIER MISSION 23

ing." If the British Empire had always
been extended and administered in this
spirit, what an untold blessing it would have
been to the world !

These two letters Edwardes brought to
the C.M.S. Committee on the very day when,
there being a deficit in the finances, many
applications for grants were being refused.
But both Taylor and Montgomery offered
large contributions towards the cost of the
projected Mission ; and the Society could
not refuse to undertake it. But where were
the men ? Two young recruits were at
once set apart for the enterprise ; but it
was indeed a fresh token of the guiding
of God's providence when French agreed
to lead the party. At their leave-taking
with the Committee he referred to a motto
on one of the tombs in Exeter Cathedral —
" This man put his hand to the plough, and
never looked back."

The Derajat proved, as might be expected,
a difficult and trying field of missionary
labour. It was a wild country inhabited
by a wild people, all Mohammedans of a
specially bigoted type. French sought to

24 HIS SECOND PIONEER WORK

avoid the few Englishmen, officers and
civilians, at the two or three chief towns,
most of whom, unlike their chief, were far
from welcoming a missionary, and to live
among the natives ; and, to conciliate
Afghan prejudice, he, against his own taste,
grew a beard, as he found that " they
measured a man as much by his beard as
by his brains." Sir R. Montgomery wrote to
him and Robert Bruce (afterwards the dis
tinguished missionary in Persia, who joined
him) : "It is uphill work at first, but you
have all Central Asia before you, if your
voices can reach the people there. Be
very discreet in all you do ... and may
God bless your labours." But they were
not allowed by the local authorities to
travel about without a guard, and " a man
with a sword " was, against French's protest,
told off to watch over him. " I suppose,"
wrote French, " that, if danger arose, he
would take to his heels and leave me to
fight my own battle." He found the people,
so far from being ready to hear the Gospel,
doubting whether the English ever prayed
or had any religion. This is always a

THE FRONTIER MISSION 25

puzzle to Mohammedans. Even at Peshawar,
where there was a regular church, they said,
" Why ask us to give up our creed ? We
are more religious than the English. They
only worship God once a week, and then
they do not kneel down to worship Him ! '
But French was surprised at the ability
shown by the mullahs when it came to real
discussion, though shocked at their " fiendish
malice " in reading passages from the New
Testament, and " mocking and blasphem
ing." This, however, only fanned his zeal.
He gave his whole heart to the work, and
diligently set himself to acquire Pushtu,
the Afghan language.

But this was not to be. Just at Christmas
(1862) he was found by a military doctor
insensible in the jungle from congestion
of the brain, and was " snatched," he was
told, " from the jaws of death," with no
hope for him but in leaving by the first
steamer for England. " With severe re
medies," he wrote, " my reason returned
(I suppose the sun and fatigue had injured
it). Afterwards I had a bad attack of
dysentery, but rallied from this, though I

26 HIS SECOND PIONEER WORK

am at the ne plus ultra of debility and de
pression." He reached England on Feb. 7,
1863.

But what of the Derajat Mission ? Bruce
and others carried on the work zealously,
and there were a few notable converts.
But the Mission was long quite under
manned. In later years Medical Missions
have been established at different points,
and have gained great influence over the
people, particularly the wild tribesmen of the
Afghan hills. One hospital, at a place called
Tank, worked by an Indian doctor, was the
only building spared when murderous raiders
attacked the town and put many of the
townspeople to the sword. Quite recently
the splendid work of Dr. Pennell at Bannu
has become widely known through his book,
Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier, for which
Lord Roberts wrote a preface. Pennell's
hospital has been pronounced by a British
officer to be worth two regiments to the
Government ; and his death by blood-
poisoning has been universally and deeply
mourned.

CHAPTER IV

AT HOME

"DETWEEN the first four of French's
-*^ periods of foreign service he had
three sojourns in England. In 1859-61,
as we have seen, he was Curate at Clifton.
After his breakdown in the Derajat, he was
six years at home. For a time he served
as Curate at Beddington, Surrey, of which
parish the venerable Dr. Marsh was Rector ;
where one of his fellow- workers was George
Maxwell Gordon, afterwards so well known
as the Pilgrim Missionary of the Punjab,
who owed some at least of the inspiration
that sent him abroad to his colleague's
devotion to the missionary cause. This
was one of the happiest episodes of French's
life. The companionship of the aged Rector,
of his saintly daughter, Miss Catherine Marsh,
and of other members of their family circle,
was a privilege of the highest kind.

27

28 AT HOME

In 1864 French became Incumbent of
St. Paul's, Cheltenham, and for four years
he ministered to a large population with
untiring assiduity. He was always ready,
besides, to go as a " deputation " for the
C.M.S. to different parts of England, so
far as his parochial duties allowed ; and
this work much refreshed him, though he
sometimes complained sadly that the com
pany at meals before or after the missionary
meeting would talk about any subject rather
than Missions — a fact familiar to all who
have engaged in deputation work, though
less noticeable now than it was before
knowledge of the field was so widely diffused.
But, although the C.M.S. claimed the best
energies he could spare from his parish, he
could not limit his sympathies even to
the Society he loved. Unlike most of the
Cheltenham clergy, but like one of them, Mr.
Fenn, he gave also his support to the S.P.G.

But, whatever might be French's official
duties, a student he would always be ;
and in the one year 1868 his diaries are stated
by his biographer to have contained extracts
from books he was reading, which are thus

AT HOME 29

/

mentioned without any definite order :
Homer, Chrysostom, Charles of Bala, Ger-
lach, Charnock, Hugh Macmillan, Life of
Lacordaire, McCheyne, Pusey, Carlyle, Mil-
man, A. Monod, Hengstenberg, Carter of
Clewer, Spenser's Faerie Queen, Livy, Pro-
pertius, Burke, Bunsen, Niebuhr, Bengel,
Berridge, Fletcher of Madeley.

All this while, however, he was conscious
that India was still calling to him. Dr.
Kay, one of his closest friends, who had
been Principal of Bishop's College at Cal
cutta, assured him that, after his last experi
ence, he ought not to go out again ; but words
from Robert Clark, the leading C.M.S.
missionary in the Punjab, were more to his
mind : "If those who ought to go won't,
then those who ought not must ! ' And the
year 1869 saw French once more on the
way to India.

It may as well be added here that when
he again returned to England after his next
period abroad, he was for three years Rec
tor of St. Ebbe's, Oxford, a parish which had
been served by F. W. Robertson, Bishop
Baring, Bishop Waldegrave, and DeanBarlow.

CHAPTER V

HIS THIRD PIONEER WORK : THE DIVINITY
COLLEGE

TN 1867 French submitted to the Church
-*- Missionary Society a paper entitled
" Proposed Plan for a Training College of
Native Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers
for North-west India and the Punjab."
Both civilians and soldiers in India, he said,
and also Indians of learning and intelligence,
considered that " the materials in hand for
constructing and building up the Native
Church in India were not turned to the best
account," and that the more advanced
converts should receive a higher theological
training to fit them to be able pastors and
evangelists. The history of Christendom,
he argued, showed that in former times
institutions were located at convenient cen
tres where " a small body of Christian teachers
devoted themselves to the more complete

30

THE DIVINITY COLLEGE 31

establishment and firmer building up, in
the truth and doctrine of Christianity, of
a portion of the choicest and ablest con
verts." This was not left to be a desultory
work, occupying the spare moments of
missionaries already fully occupied. The
ripest veterans undertook the work. An
important feature of French's scheme was
that the teaching should be given in the
vernacular. " The plan of instructing our
native teachers in English without putting
them in possession of the power to express
themselves on Christian doctrine correctly
in the vernacular is quite abhorrent to the
general practice of the Church of Christ
from the beginning, as well as to right
reason itself."

After a good deal of correspondence this
scheme came before the C.M.S. Committee
on Feb. 18, 1868. It so happen that on the
same day were considered proposals by Sir
R. Montgomery (who was now at home) for
the better training of the Society's students
at Islington ; and when, after two hours' dis
cussion, these received approval, French's
similar suggestions for Indian students came

32 HIS THIRD PIONEER WORK:

on. Distinguished Anglo-Indians, Mont
gomery himself, J. F. Thomas, F. N. Maltby,
H. Carre Tucker, and leading clergymen
like Dr. J. C. Miller, all spoke in his favour ;
the plan was adopted with enthusiasm,
and French was given carte blanche to
carry it out.

And^then a^fresh token of God's favour
appeared in the offer of the Rev. J. W.
Knott, who was present that day, to join
in the enterprise. Knott was one of the
most remarkable men who ever dedicated
himself to missionary service. He was a
Fellow of Brasenose, and had been an
ardent disciple of Dr. Pusey, who sent
him to the charge of St. Saviour's, Leeds,
the church built by Pusey at his own
cost, though under the name only of " A
Penitent," Dr. Hook's great work had
made Leeds an Anglican stronghold; but,
High Churchman as he was, he disliked
both the ritual and the teaching at St.
Saviour's. To Pusey himself the church
proved a sore trouble. Within six years
of its consecration nine out of fifteen
clergymen connected with it seceded and

THE DIVINITY COLLEGE 33

joined the Church of Rome. Knott was
sent by Pusey to retrieve the position, and
he was soon the recognised " confessor "
of hundreds of men and women from all
parts of the North of England. But the
issue in his case was very different. After
a prolonged and painful mental struggle,
he avowed to Pusey that his experience
of the confessional had entirely changed
his views, but in the opposite direction ;
and eventually he resigned his charge,
and returned to Oxford. Presently, in
virtue of his Brasenose fellowship, he suc
ceeded to the important and lucrative
rectory of East Ham. It was this in
fluential position that he now surrendered
in order to join French.

Much correspondence with India as to the
place where the college should be located
caused delay ; but on January 5, 1869,
the C.M.S. committee-room was crowded
for the leave-taking of French and Knott.
The speakers on the occasion were Professor
Birks of Cambridge, French's old friend
Dr. Kay, Dr. Alexander Duff, the veteran
founder of Educational Missions in India,
3

84 HIS THIRD PIONEER WORK

and Colonel Lake, a distinguished soldier
and administrator from the Punjab, who
afterwards became an honorary secretary
of the Society. Dr. Kay pleaded earnestly
that in accordance with Thomason's old
motto, Sta TO ovop.d fjiov /ce/coTTta/cas /ecu ou /ce/c-
/xi7/cas, French might be able to " labour and
not faint," and not overwork. French, in
his reply, referred to a Roman soldier
mentioned by Livy, who, after twenty
campaigns, was going forth to war again,
and who said, " I have eight children,
and might claim exemption, but I shall
always be ready to go against my country's
foes when my Imperator calls me." It
was remarked, says French's biographer,
that one of the two missionaries was leaving
behind eight children, and the other a
living of £800 a year.

It had been settled that the new divinity
college should be located at Lahore, the
capital of the Punjab. That city was not
an Anglican mission-station, but the Ameri
can Presbyterians, who had occupied it
before the first English missionaries entered
the Punjab, spontaneously asked the C.M.S.

A STREET SCENE IN LAHORE.
Plto:o by C. Pilkington.

34]

THE DIVINITY COLLEGE 35

to send a native pastor for Indians of the
Church of England who chanced to be
there ; and now, with the same generosity,
they welcomed the selection of Lahore
for the projected institution, as being the
most easily accessible centre for students
from a distance. It was not French's wish
to begin on a grand scale. It was quite
in accordance with his ideas that, on the
night he arrived at Lahore, there was no
one to receive him, so he took his baggage
himself in a hand-barrow to the dak bunga
low, and found a sofa to pass the night on
— " beginning," as he said, his new life
•'in an inn, according to the best precedent
that could be followed."

French's plans did not meet with the
approval of all the missionaries. Some
doubted the wisdom of his scheme. Cer
tainly it was a remarkable one. It was to
give a really high-class theological training.
The Hebrew Old Testament, the Greek
Septuagint, the Greek New Testament, the
Greek and Latin Fathers, were to be studied ;
and although English, with its wealth of
Christian literature, was not to be excluded,

86 HIS THIRD PIONEER WORK

the instrument of instruction was to be
the vernacular Urdu. That is to say, the
students were to read, say, Ezekiel in
Hebrew and Ephesians in Greek, and Mr.
French and his helpers were to lecture on
these books in Urdu, with occasional use
of Persian, Pushtu, Punjabi, Sanscrit, and
Arabic ; while Chrysostom and Augustine,
Dorner and Tholuck, Hooker and Owen,
were to be laid under contribution. " A
Mohammedan convert, brought up all his
life in distaste of and prejudice against
English, should find that his want of English
does not disqualify him for perfecting his
curriculum of theology. Christianity should
be domesticated on the Indian soil."

After many delays, during which French
was constantly occupied, not only in pre
paration for the future by linguistic studies
and translational work, but also in frequent
evangelistic tours in the country, the college
was opened on November 21, 1870. There
were only native buildings, ill adapted
to the purpose even after alterations ;
and some years elapsed before the present
premises, including the chapel, appeared.

THE DIVINITY COLLEGE 37

There were only four students, but seven
others soon joined, and with these French
felt he had a good beginning. All through
the weary negotiations about the site and
the alterations — for which kind of work
French was by nature unfitted, and which
therefore was a heavy burden upon him
— he had rested on the assurance that
every obstacle or disappointment was
specially ordained of God to throw His
servants more entirely on Him.

But where was Knott ? Alas ! he was
already dead. He had used the waiting time
in earnest work at Peshawar, not only
helping in the Mission there, but ministering
to the British troops. Unhappily, as human
judgment would say, he stayed on too long
in that fever- stricken valley, and worked
too persistently, and on June 28, 1870, he
died suddenly after a few hours' illness.
The greatest grief was manifested by the
whole English community ; and the funeral
was a very striking scene :

The body was conveyed to the cemetery

38 HIS THIRD PIONEER WORK

on a gun-carriage lent by the officer com
manding the Royal Artillery, and was
carried to the grave by eight soldiers,
members of a Bible-class he had conducted.
Nearly every officer of the station was
present, including the General and the
Deputy Commissioner and 500 men of
the 5th and 38th regiments."

French had learned to love and admire
Knott greatly, and he regarded the remov
al of such a man as " a strange and almost
unparalleled mystery " ; but, he added,
44 It is comforting to rest assured that God
is His own interpreter." Other brethren
came to his assistance. He was helped at
different times by Robert Clark, Rowland
Bateman, T. R. Wade, and his old colleague
at Beddington, George Maxwell Gordon.
Deep interest was taken in England in his
proceedings. The money for purchasing
the site, and for scholarships to maintain
the students, was provided by generous
friends in his congregations at Clifton,
Beddington, Cheltenham, etc., as well as
in India. Rugby and Repton sent offer
tories. The Rev. H. Houghton gave £1,000

THE DIVINITY COLLEGE 89

to endow a native professorship on con
dition that the Septuagint was included in
the college course. Dr. John Wordsworth
(afterwards Bishop of Salisbury) sent con
tributions from Oxford men, and Dr. West-
cott similar ones from Cambridge. Dr.
Lightfoot (afterwards Bishop of Durham),
at the S.P.G. annual meeting, referred to
" the noble letters which Mr. French had
sent to the C.M.S." ; and Westcott char
acteristically wrote : " The West has much
to learn from the East, and the lesson will
not be taught till we hear the truth as it
is apprehended by Eastern minds."

The students came from ail parts of
North India. There were Afghans from
the mountains and Hindus from the plains,
Rajputs, Punjabis, Kashmiris, Persians.
Most had been Mohammedans, some Hindus
or Sikhs. Some were baptized Christians
from infancy, being children of converts ;
some were the fruit of mission schools ;
some had found Christ in later life. Al
though the majority were Anglicans, others
were not excluded. All were welcome ;
but on one condition — they must wear

40 HIS THIRD PIONEER WORK

Indian dress. Once a catechist from Delhi,
who was in European garb, applied for
admission, and French let him in for a
week, hoping he would conform, but on
his refusal he was sent away.

On the same principle French gave the
students Bingham's Christian Antiquities
to study, that they might " know the habits
and customs of worship and discipline in
the early Church, which were often so much
more Oriental and more free from stiffness
than our English liturgical services, bor
rowed so largely from Rome." He was a
great admirer of patristic theology, and
would translate Chrysostom or Augustine,
or Hilary on the Trinity, direct from the
Greek or Latin into Hindustani. But he
did not neglect more modern writers. With
a view to lectures on the Being of God, the
Person of Christ, the Work of the Holy
Spirit, etc., he studied afresh Hooker and
Owen and Butler, Dorner and Martensen
and Liddon. This meant hard work :

' I do not think many can have an idea
of the labour these classes cost. After all

THE DIVINITY COLLEGE 41

the time that I have spent on languages
and theological books, I find that to lecture
usefully an hour of preparation for each
lecture is scant measure ; often many hours
are required even for one. . . . With the
Mohammedans dogging our steps and scent
ing out keenly and industriously every real
and imaginary difficulty, we cannot do as
we would, and confine ourselves wholly to
the spiritual interpretation. The critical
will have its place. . . . Then, to put it all
into intelligible and expressive Hindustani
involves further torture of brain and culling
of technical words from Arabic and Persian
text-books, the Sufi literature, the Vedant
and other philosophical systems of the
Hindus."

But all was subordinate to the study of the
Bible itself :

" Between our Greek and Hebrew lectures,
prayer- meetings, expositions, and sermons,
we manage to distribute various parts of
the Old and New Testaments. ... It is
delightful to witness . . . the beaming coun
tenances which attest their joy. They
thoroughly realise the text, ' 1 am as glad of
Thy Word as one that findeth great spoil.' '

42 HIS THIRD PIONEER WORK

Severe as the Lahore curriculum was—
too severe, some thought, though French
insisted that the students took with especial
kindness to Hebrew — the men were not
there only for book-study. Evangelistic
work in the city and district was carried on,
and there were baptisms year by year in
the tank in the college grounds. Besides
this, French led his men in the vacations
to distant parts. A new district on the
Jhelum was taken up, as a special field for
them ; but this plan did not last. It was
projected by G. M. Gordon, but the students
had neither the physical nor the spiritual
strength to do what he did. Gordon, in
fact, became almost a fakir. He lived in a
tower, the corner bastion of an old fort.
He found he could generally walk ten miles
a day — not a common thing in India — and
thus be independent of a horse or " turn-
turn " (gig). " It would spoil the verse,
4 How beautiful upon the mountains,' etc.,"
he said, " if -feet were exchanged for hoofs I '
And the district he traversed in this way
from his old tower was " as if a London
clergyman had Lincoln, York, and New-

THE DIVINITY COLLEGE 43

castle under his charge, to be visited periodic
ally without railways or coaches." This
kind of life did not suit native students.

French had the joy of seeing several of
his men in definite posts of missionary
service before he left India again. Two
were ordained by Bishop Milman of Calcutta
on Dec. 15, 1872. These were (1) Imam
Shah, who had been a most bigoted Moham
medan, but had been struck by the term
14 Our Father " applied to God — so strange
a phrase in Moslem ears — and then had been
led to Christ by the Rev. Baud Singh (a
Sikh baptized at the S.P.G. Mission at
Cawnpore), and who has been now for
forty years pastor of the native congregation
at Peshawar ; (2) John Williams, a Christian-
born native of the North-west Provinces,
who had gone to the Afghan frontier as
a Government doctor, having an official
medical qualification, but who joined the
C.M.S. Mission on a lower stipend, and for
many years laboured at Tank, conducting
the hospital before mentioned as spared by
the Afghan raiders.

But four of the students died early ; one

44 HIS THIRD PIONEER WORK

drowned in the Jhelum ; one of consumption,
who confessed to the Rev. Tara Chand
(S.P.G. Delhi) that his real heart- con version
had taken place at the college ; a third also
of consumption ; and a fourth struck down
by fever while itinerating, who went on
preaching in his delirium.

At length French himself could no longer
struggle against repeated illnesses. After
one of them he wrote, " To-day I have
wound up my watch again for the first time
for about seven weeks, and knelt down for
the first time, as I have been too weak to
do this. My heart has often knelt, I trust,
but not my knees." One cannot wonder
that he should be ill, when we find Mr.
Ridley (afterwards so well known as the
devoted Bishop of Caledonia), who was at
that time a C.M.S. missionary in the Punjab
and itinerated with French, writing of him
that he was impossible to manage as a
patient ! — and, on the other hand, helpless
as a nurse when others were ill.

So, in May 1874, he found himself once
more with wife and family in England.
He was succeeded in the Principalship of

THE DIVINITY COLLEGE 45

the college by another Oxford man, Dr.
W. Hooper. But Hooper was a Sanscrit
scholar, and more interested in the Hindus
than in the Mohammedans ; and after a
few years he moved to Allahabad to start
a similar institution for the N.W. Provinces.
A third Oxonian, F. A. P. Shirreff, followed
at Lahore, and gave twenty years of service
to the college ; and a fourth, H. G. Grey,
succeeded him. Eventually the Oxford suc
cession was broken by the appointment of
E. F. E. Wigram, who is a Cambridge man.
French's plans have naturally been modi
fied as the years have gone by ; but the
college still maintains its career of many-
sided usefulness.

CHAPTER VI

HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK : THE BISHOPRIC
OF LAHORE

immense diocese of Calcutta, which
at first had comprised all India, and
Ceylon, and Australia, had not been divided
since the formation, in 1835-7, of the
dioceses of Madras (including Ceylon) and
Bombay and Australia (Sydney). It is
needless here to notice the various difficulties,
legal and other, which long prevented any
further action. But at last, in 1877, plans
were successfully matured for two new
bishoprics, for Burma and the Punjab
respectively. The Bishopric of Lahore was
endowed by a fund of £20,000 raised in
memory of Bishop Milman of Calcutta, who
had died while visiting the frontier stations
in the previous year. Two former Vice
roys, Lords Lawrence and Northbrook, and

46

HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK 47

distinguished Anglo-Indians like Sir Bartle
Frere, attended the inaugural meeting at
Lambeth Palace ; and Lord Salisbury, who
was then Secretary of State for India, con
tributed £1,000. The S.P.C.K. gave £5,000,
the S.P.G. £2,000, the Colonial Bishoprics
Fund £3,000 ; £4,000 was raised in India.
Lord Salisbury asked Archbishop Tait to
propose a man for the new bishopric, and
Tait wrote to French, who was then working
at Oxford as Rector of St. Ebbe's, saying that
he wished to suggest his name. After con
sulting three or four friends, French agreed,
on condition that any responsibilities to the
Government of India would not involve a
prohibition of distinctly missionary work ;
and this proviso did not prevent the formal
offer coming to him in the name of the
Queen.

The selection was received with universal
approval. Dr. Westcott wrote of the "joy
and confident hope " of all at Cambridge.
ttvWe seem," he said, " to see the great
thoughts of the [Divinity] School become
the inspiring thoughts of a diocese, and so,
if God will, the solid foundation of a true

48 HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK

native Church." The consecration took
place at Westminster Abbey on St. Thomas's
Day (1877) together with that of Dr. Tit-
comb for the other new Indian bishopric of
Rangoon. The sermon was preached by
French's old friend, Dr. Kay, who, in con
senting to do so, remarked how greatly the
missionaries would rejoice to have as their
Bishop one who could " know the heart "
(Exod. xxiii. 9) of a missionary. His text
was Acts xxv iii. 30, 31, the last two verses
of that book ; and the closing words, " no
man forbidding him," came with special
appropriateness in view of the condition
which French had attached to his acceptance
of the bishopric. Within a month he was
on his way to India, starting on Jan. 16,
1878.

The new diocese comprised the Punjab
and the adjacent Native States (such as
Kashmir), and the Province of Sindh. No
part of this territory had been British when
the Acts of Parliament of 1813 and 1833
constituted the dioceses of Calcutta, Madras,
and Bombay ; and therefore the jurisdiction
which had been exercised by the Bishop of

BISHOP FRENCH.

43]

THE BISHOPRIC OF LAHORE 49

Calcutta over the clergy in the Punjab, and
by the Bishop of Bombay over those in
Sindh, was purely ecclesiastical and not
denned by Parliament ; so there were few
legal difficulties in forming the new diocese.
But an important, though small, fragment
of Calcutta Diocese was also included. This
was the Delhi district, the historic city of
Delhi having been transferred from the
North-west (now the United) Provinces to
the Punjab after the Mutiny in recognition
of the fact that it was the Punjab Army
that had besieged and captured it, which
was really the decisive victory that restored
British rule.

The inclusion of Delhi" in the new diocese
gave Bishop French jurisdiction over a
Mission in which, though his own con
nexion had been with the C.M.S., he
was personally interested, it having been
started, in fact, at his suggestion. This
was the Cambridge Mission, formed under
the auspices of Lightfoot and Westcott,
both of them Divinity Professors, and of
which Edward Bickersteth, son of the
future Bishop of Exeter, and grandson of
4

50 HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK

a former C.M.S. Secretary, was the first
Head. The S.P.G. being already estab
lished at Delhi, the new Mission, while
maintaining its independence, was affiliated
to the venerable Society.

But all the rest of the Anglican Missions
in the diocese belonged to the C.M.S. ,
which had been invited to the Punjab
twenty-five years before by its early British
rulers, Henry and John Lawrence, and
their colleagues. It had indeed been pre
ceded by the American Presbyterian Mission,
which had settled at Lahore immediately
on the annexation in 1849 ; but its work
was more widely extended than that of the
Americans, the important cities of Am-
ritsar and Multan and Peshawar, and
Kashmir, and the Derajat (French's pre
vious field), and Karachi and Hyderabad in
Sindh, being occupied — without reckoning
several rural stations ; and it has been
largely extended since then. The British
troops also were numerous, and the English
civilian community not small ; so a suffi
ciently arduous work lay before the new
Bishop.

THE BISHOPRIC OF LAHORE 51

French received a warm welcome from
all in the Punjab ; not least from those
whom he alludes to as " the dear Pres
byterian brethren, Newton and For man "

—the men who had, five-and-twenty years
before, joined in the invitation to the
C.M.S. to the newly conquered province.
Some of the chaplains were afraid of what
a C.M.S. missionary might turn out to be ;
but they soon found that they had a
Bishop of singularly independent mind and
very broad sympathies, and who, while
definitely Evangelical on fundamental doc
trines, was really with them, and not with
the majority of his old C.M.S. brethren,
upon many matters external and ecclesi
astical. He appointed as Archdeacon a
leading chaplain, the Rev. H. J. Matthew

—who was destined in after- years to succeed
him in the see ; and he desired to appoint
Mr. Robert Clark, the senior C.M.S. mis
sionary, as an Archdeacon specifically for
the Missions and the native Church ; but
this, on some technical ground, the Govern
ment refused to allow.

Bishop French was not great in or-

52 HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK

ganisation. It was not his fault, however,
that the " diocesan synods " which he
three times assembled were without definite
powers, and were only like the " diocesan
conferences " in England. The " established "
position of the Church in India prevented
the " synods " from being effective govern
ing bodies like those in the non-established
Churches. But at least they afforded
opportunities for chaplains and missionaries,
and missionaries of different societies, to
meet for prayer and friendly conference ;
opportunities, too, for French to deliver
valuable addresses on Church principles
and work, and to exercise his remarkable
personal influence. A lay member wrote
to him after the second gathering : " Your
Synod was to me a baptism of love, tender
ness, spirituality, and power, as it was, I
believe, to every one present." His succes
sor, Bishop Matthew, wrote in after- years
that French " had not the gift of working
through others " ; but his own individual
labours were untiring.

Of these labours much might be said.
He travelled to every civil or military or

THE BISHOPRIC OF LAHORE 53

missionary station in the diocese, preaching
both in English and in the vernaculars,
confirming, visiting clergy and laity. " His
humility and gentleness and self-denial and
love," wrote an editor generally disposed
to criticise him, " have been sermons to
all who beheld him, just as his words have
been to all who heard him." He was only
really disliked by the worldly English
people who resented his faithful preaching.
He himself said that they would " listen
with indifferency ' to the exposition of
evangelical doctrines, " and sleep it out,"

— " justification, etc., what care they about
such things ? ' " But they do resent being
preached to about conversion, and being
told that all are not Israel who are of
Israel, and that the friendship of the world
is enmity with God." And he felt it to
be his plain duty, as a bishop, to " reprove,
rebuke, exhort," though " with all long-
suffering." In one of his letters home he
wrote ; "1 preached a solemn sermon yes
terday at the pro- cathedral on the duty
of Society and the Church with reference to

adulterers in our midst. Mrs. called

54, HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK

it an Athanasian kind of sermon." Another
time he mentions having to " soothe " a
chaplain and congregation who were in
dignant at his having written in the church
record book, " The day was not satisfactory,
I fear, viewed in the light of eternity,"
referring to the few communicants and
small collection. But how did he try to
" soothe them " ? "I tell them the censure
was chiefly on myself for preaching so in
effectually ; but they can't take this in ! "
He was never at home in what is called
" worldly society," except when he found
opportunities for testimony. At one dinner
party he defended Christianity against a
man who praised Buddhism as " the noblest,
truest, holiest religion in the world " ; on
which occasion an Indian of high rank
expressed surprise at the conversation, as
" he thought English gentlemen never talked
of anything but polo.":

In fact, French's greatest happiness was
to get away from state and social " func
tions," and to go preaching in the frontier
mountain valleys or in the villages of the
plains ; and this he did whenever his

THE BISHOPRIC OF LAHORE 55

episcopal duties allowed. Not that his only
evangelistic work was among natives. He
highly valued his many opportunities of
addressing British soldiers ; and he took
the total abstinence pledge, despite his
" often infirmities," as an example and
encouragement to them. The Afghan War
of 1879-81 gave him an opening for work
of this kind which he eagerly seized. He
went up to Quetta, and to Kandahar, in
company with George Maxwell Gordon,
who was himself killed at Kandahar while
attending to wounded soldiers ; and his
journals give interesting accounts of his
efforts to influence officers and privates
alike. His biographer confesses that " he
might sometimes weary the patience of
the soldier in that hot Indian climate by
the length of his discourse, or shoot above
the heads of all but the more thoughtful of
his hearers." " But every soldier could
appreciate his manifest sincerity, and when
he went miles out of his way in the burning
sun to minister to two or three in their
sickness, or stripped off his coat in hospital
to rub the limbs of some poor fellow writhing

56 HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK

with pains of cholera, they recognised that
in their own chief pastor they had one
who understood their troubles, one who
was ever ready to endure all hardness as
a good soldier of Jesus Christ." And an
aide-de-camp at Lahore testified to his
influence with " fine young fellows, plucky,
honourable, and straight," who found that
"his big and chivalrous heart made them
feel better men," and ready to "do their
round of parade or stables or whatever
came to their hand with a keener sense of
duty."

Although French continued Bishop of
Lahore only ten years, he was successful
in building the cathedral, despite all sorts
of difficulties. The scholar and saint was
no dreamer. He might not easily set others
to work, but what he could do himself he
did indeed with his might. " I would
rather," he wrote to his daughter, " have
a church built to remember me by than
have my marble face looked at in West
minster Abbey." The church services at
Lahore had for thirty years been held in
a building which had been the tomb of a

THE BISHOPRIC OF LAHORE 57

dancing-girl who became a Begum. Sir
R. Montgomery, when Lieut.-Governor, had
secured a site for a church, and some money
had been collected, but the project had
hung fire ; and now Bishop French resolved
that the new diocese should have a cathedral
built " worthily of God." " In the midst
of an architectural people," he wrote, " and
most self-sacrificing in what they spend on
buildings for sacred purposes, it is a scandal
that we should worship in a tomb belong
ing to a Mohammedan past." The story of
his efforts, both in India and in England,
to raise the money is pathetic indeed. " I
have written," he wrote, " my hands almost
into paralysis begging' and pleading; but
the paralysis of results exceeds that of
hands." For three years he gave half his
episcopal income to the fund, cutting
down all possible expense in order to do
this.

At length, in the tenth and last year
of his episcopate, the building was, not
indeed completed, but in a state allowing
of its being consecrated and put to regular
use ; and the consecration took place on

58 HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK

the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul,
January 25, 1887. The Lieut.-Governor
ordered the closing for the day of the
law-courts and government offices, so that
there might be a general holiday. The
Bishop arranged that one aisle should be
reserved for the British soldiers and the
other for the native Christians. At the
English service he himself preached ; but
this was followed by an Urdu service, at
which Dr. Imad-ud-din was the preacher,
and the lessons were read by Mr. (afterwards
Rev.) H. E. Perkins, Commissioner of Am-
ritsar, and the Rev. Mian Sadiq Masih.
French strongly insisted on the right of
the native Christians to a part in the cathe
dral ; and he would not allow any symbol
or ornament in it that could " offend the
Moslem's horror of images, or foster super
stition in any recent convert from a base
idolatry." An illustration of his ruling
even small details by scriptural precedent
occurs in one of his letters :

" There was a wish on the part of some
to have a sort of monster lunch in the

THE BISHOPRIC OF LAHORE 59

Montgomery Hall, but I have stood out for
hospitalities of a more private kind at
the houses of civilians and other well-to-
do people. At a huge lunch it often hap
pens that ' one is hungry and another is
drunken,' and there is much more expendi
ture of wine, bad waiting, and bad cooking.
The model I have proposed is Nehem. viii.
8-18."

In his sermon French pleaded earnestly
that " no invidious exclusiveness of race "
might begrudge poor native Christians their
rightful share in the cathedral. " The sons
of the stranger that join themselves to the
Lord," he quoted from Isa. Ivi., " even
them will I bring to My holy mountain
and make them joyful in My house of
prayer." And with a characteristic pro
phetic fervour he anticipated a day when
" the long-severed East and West " should
meet in common worship :

" Even such a thing might happen as
St. Chrysostom tells happened in a Greek
church at Constantinople. He was about
to preach himself, but a Gothic priest came

60 HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK

in with a number of his people, and he, the
Greek archbishop, gave up his pulpit for
that day. And so before the polished
Greeks was heard the rough and (then)
uncultured tongue of our northern fore
fathers, and they learnt the lesson that
in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew,
Briton nor Hindu, Barbarian, Scythian,
bond nor free, but Christ all and in
all."

With these lofty aspirations filling his
mind, we can understand how the Bishop
always remained a missionary, not in heart
only, but in actual life. Take, as one
illustration, what he wrote about Quetta
in 1882 :

" The Supreme Government of India has
obtained permission to occupy Quetta per
manently as a standing military outpost
of strategic importance, stretching out its
hands to the turbulent tribes, and beckoning
and commanding peace to them. Oh that
in it may be the sweet message of peace, and
with it the Hands that made Joseph's
hands strong ! It was a great privilege to
spend three afternoons in witnessing to

THE BISHOPRIC OF LAHORE 61

Afghans in the fruit-market at Quetta in
their own tongue, and leaving a few copies
of the Word of God among them. I trans
lated and copied out Isa. liii., and gave it
to one of the best-educated among them to
take home with him, and never part with,
as written out with the Bishop's own
hand. May God graciously bless the feeble
effort."

It was French's especial joy to ordain
Indian clergymen, and he was privileged to
admit eleven to the ministry of the Church
during his ten years' episcopate. One of
these may be mentioned more particularly.
He was a learned Sikh pundit, " steeped
in Sanskrit, Vedic, and other philosophic
lore," and " a man of family and influence
and authority with Government." In 1881
French wrote, "He has completely come
round, as I do trust, to the simple truth
at it is in Jesus, and is very anxious to
study Hebrew at the College." " I stayed,"
continued the Bishop in his simplicity, " a
few hours with him at his own village,
and partook of his milk and chapaties."
Kharak Singh — that was his name — in his

62 HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK

turn was at a "tea-dinner" with the
Bishop, and the latter wrote :

"The poor old pundit didn't know how
to use his knife at all with a leg of fowl,
so I took up mine with my fingers, and
begged him not to mind doing it, as I
didn't. I had to ask Mrs. Wade's pardon.
I hope she won't make a picture of the
Bishop at the head of his table eating with
his fingers. . . . The pundit entered into
a very difficult discussion about stones and
gems, which Mrs. W. thought rather above
her, being in Sanskrit, or nearly so."

This good man was ordained in 1887.
One convert of the C.M.S. Mission whom
French did not ordain was enticed away
from the Church for a while by the Sal
vation Army, brought to England by
them in 1886, and exhibited in London
on an elephant as one of the fruits of
their work. But he was rescued by Dr.
Weitbrecht, who happened to be in Eng
land at the time, and was ordained by
French's successor in the see ; and he
occupies to-day a leading position in the
diocese.

THE BISHOPRIC OF LAHORE 63

With the most conspicuous of the Indian
clergymen, Imad-ud-din,* the Bishop had a
close friendship, and it was a special
pleasure to him when he received the au
thority of Archbishop Benson to invest
the learned moulvie with the Lambeth
degree of D.D. He performed the simple
ceremony in the mission church at Am-
ritsar, and in the course of his address
said :

" I wish to make it clear that it is not
merely as a mark of honour and distinction
that this title is bestowed upon our brother
by the head of the Church of England, in
the behalf of that Church, and as its chief
representative pastor, but as a symbol
of brotherly love, sympathy, and fatherly
blessing, and as a bond and pledge of
fellowship and friendship between the two
Churches of England and India ; or, rather
to signify that if the British and Hindu are
two in race, in the Church they are one,
linked and knit in an inseparable, indivisible

* This Imad-ud-din was the Mohammedan moulvie who
had assisted in the Agra discussion noticed on page 17.
He had afterwards been converted to Christianity through
reading St. Matthew's Gospel.

64 HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK

bond of love, friendship, and fellowship ;
not that one branch should be in bondage
to the other, but that they should, by the
grace of God, be perfectly joined together
in the same mind and in the same judg
ment."

French's opinions on the problems of
future Church organisation in the mission-
field were based both on principles gathered
from the whole history of the Church and
on his practical experience of actual
existing work. He deprecated a " native
Church " separate from the English Church
in India. One Church for India was his
ideal. But he was not so strict as many
are on questions of discipline : for instance,
he was disposed, like some other of the
Indian Bishops, to relax somewhat the
rule that no polygamist could be baptized.
As regards the Thirty-nine Articles he
wrote :

6 There is very much in our Articles so
happily and wisely expressed that I should
be sorry to see them rejected as a whole,

THE BISHOPRIC OF LAHORE 65

though 1 should not object to see them
revised and modified where passing and
short-lived phases of English church parties
gave a tinge of insular specialities to the
formularies employed."

In one branch of missionary service
Bishop French took an important part.
This was the translation and revision of
the Scriptures, etc., in which so ac
complished a scholar and linguist would
naturally take a deep interest. In the
summer of 1881 he spent several weeks at
Murree, in the hills, with Dr. Hooper, Mr.
Shirreff, Tara Chand, and Imad-ud-din,
devoting six hours a day to the revision of
the Hindustani Prayer-book, on which the
S.P.C.K. expended £2,000. The result, in
deed, was not wholly satisfactory. The
Bishop overruled his colleagues unduly,
and used his great learning to introduce
many Arabic and other terms which, how
ever scholarly, were not intelligible to the
simple native Christians ; and the book,
though valuable for reference, has not
proved suitable for general use. On the
5

66 HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK

other hand, his revision, with two frontier
missionaries of the C.M.S., of the Old
Testament and St. Luke in Pushtu (the
Afghan language) was a success.

The whole missionary work of the Church
of Christ commanded French's enthusiastic
sympathy. So far as the Church of England
was concerned, he warmly welcomed Arch
bishop Benson's scheme for a Board of
Missions, by which an official recognition
by the Church would be given to all the
work done in its name, without superseding
or interfering with the Societies that were
actually doing it. He was no mere theoriser.
He wanted the Gospel sent to all nations,
and it was with him a secondary thing
what particular organisation sent it. He
especially watched with keen interest the
evangelisation of East and Central Africa
by the C.M.S. and the U.M.C.A. ; and he
sought to instruct the Anglo-Indians of
the Punjab by giving lectures in several
places on the story of the Uganda Mission
down to the death of Bishop Hannington.

Among other interests of Bishop French
was the Punjab University. Not only was

THE BISHOPRIC OF LAHORE 67

he, naturally, a member of the Senate;
he gave lectures also, and acted as examiner.
But this and other occupations of his time
and strength must be passed over.

As the tenth year of his episcopate ran
its course, French, more and more conscious
that his health was not equal to the burdens
of the diocese, was in correspondence with
Archbishop Benson, and with his old Rugby
school-mate, Lord Cross, who was then
Secretary of State for India, about his
retirement. Dr. Benson received the in
timation with deep regret. He wrote to
French : " Your very presence in your place
has lifted, and daily lifts, the mission cause
into its true position "for the first time."
But he yielded to French's earnest request
for his support in pressing on the Governr
ment the appointment of Archdeacon Mat
thew to the bishopric ; and, when this was
settled, French sent in his formal resigna
tion, as from December 22, 1887, ten years
and two days since his consecration.

But it was not retirement from the foreign
service of the Church. On the contrary,
French's desire was to devote himself more

68 HIS FOURTH PIONEER WORK

entirely than ever to mission work, without
the inevitable pomp and circumstance of
episcopal life. How for the fifth time he
became a pioneer in a new sphere, a future
chapter will tell.

CHAPTER VII

HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN

T 7 IE WED ecclesiastically, Bishop French
was so unique in his position as an
Anglican Churchman, and in his attitude
to Church parties and controversies, that
no account of him would be complete
without a careful statement on these matters.
We have seen that he was brought up
in an evangelical home of the beautiful
old type which so many writers not them
selves identified with evangelical views-
Mr. G. W. E. Russell notably — have loved
to describe ; and that his Oxford life,
which coincided with the later Newman
period, did not move him from his whole
hearted evangelical faith. So much so
that, when the missionary call came to
him, no question arose as to the organisa
tion he should join. He went to the

69

70 HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN

C.M.S. as a matter of course, and was joy
fully received into the brotherhood of that
Society. And all his life he loved the
C.M.S., pleaded its cause, defended it from
hostile criticism, lived in close fellowship
with many of its leading members at home
and missionaries abroad. " The dear old
C.M.S.," he wrote in 1887, " I plead for
with heart and soul, however much I wish
sometimes they were able to work more
in harmony with Church authorities, and
on the lines of the Church history of the
first four centuries."

But he certainly did not love the Evan
gelical Party as such. " It is evangelical
truth," he wrote in 1867, " that I stickle
for. The party, as a party, I never fight
for : its Church views I don't agree with ;
but its teaching, or rather the grand
fundamental life-giving truth, which it was
commissioned to bring to the forefront,
will never die, I believe, because it is the
heart and core of the Gospel." But earlier
even than that, during his first period in
India, he wrote: "In Church views . . .
constitutionally and by experience, as well

HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN 71

as by study of facts, I am a High Church
man." His historic instinct, his imaginative
mind, his love of symbolism, his keen
appreciation of patristic and mediaeval
writings, his strong view of episcopal au
thority, all combined to influence him in
that direction.

At the same time, he was in no sense
identified with High Churchmen as a party.
He took his line quite independently of
what any recognised Church party might
think. His teaching on the Holy Com
munion, for instance, was of a via media
type. He used language which Evangelicals
would naturally avoid ; but his words,
44 In the heart of the faithful recipient,
not in the hands of the priest who celebrates,
the elements are the conveyors of the Lord's
body and blood in all their virtues and
healing and cleansing gifts," remind us of
Keble's original expression in the earlier
editions of the Christian Year, " In the
heart, Not in the hands," which in later
editions was altered to, '4 In the heart,
As in the hands." He not only approved
but earnestly advocated the placing of a

72 HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN

cross on or over the holy table, and on one
occasion replaced with his own hands the
cross which some one had taken down ;
but he wrote strongly against " bowings
and genuflexions " borrowed from Rome.
He not only defended Evening Communion,
but himself practised it, " having," he
said, " no sympathy with the Ritualists
about Early Communion as alone valid
and permissible." He habitually took the
eastward position, but consented, where
it was objected to, to take " the corner
between the north and east." On con
fession, too, he took a middle line. He
condemned " the invasion of the secrecy
and privacy of homes " which he thought
the Roman use involved, and held that
" a ministry whose principle is that the
Christian shepherd is beyond all else the
father-confessor of his people, though it
gratifies the love of power, and fastens
silken chains round hearts that are natur
ally reverential and dependent, feeble, and
loving to shake off responsibility, yet does
not in the end foster robustness and solidity
of Christian character, nor cultivate the

HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN 73

best and purest and strongest types of
Christian manhood and womanhood." Yet
when the Sisters of St. Denys, whom he
had invited to India, desired to make their
confessions, he heard them himself, " dread
ing it beforehand," but preferring this to
" handing it over to young chaplains."
" I had quite satisfied myself," he wrote,
44 from Hooker, and words in the Service
for the Sick and Holy Communion offices,
that, within reasonable limits, it was the
duty of the Church of England to recognise
it as part of the ministerial function."

It will be readily understood that the
High Church chaplains in the diocese, who
acknowledged that they received him with
prejudice on account of his antecedents,
learned to appreciate and respect him,»
His successor, Bishop Matthew, wrote : ;t No
diocese was ever administered on lines
more independent of party than the diocese
of Lahore by its first Bishop. He had
points of contact with every party, and
he endeavoured to secure competent repre
sentatives of every school among his clergy."

On the other hand, the C.M.S. men,

while they revered his saintly character
and his unreserved devotion to the mission
ary cause, were, as might be expected, a
good deal troubled about the line he took.
That a man should take the eastward
position at Evening Communion seemed to
some of them strangely inconsistent — as no
doubt it would equally be to the opposite
school ! That he should bring Sisters with
vows into the diocese, and at the same
time translate Spurgeon's sermons and write
of " the delightful notices " of Moody 's
services and Haslam's reminiscences in The
Christian, was a perplexing problem. The
senior missionary, Robert Clark, a man of
the highest character, who did a noble
fifty years' work, and who was his intimate
friend, gently remonstrated with him on
some of the points above mentioned ; but
French, with all his humility and distrust
of self, was immovable in matters of con
science. To no man would he have more
gladly yielded than to Robert Clark ; but
in 1886 he wrote to him: " If mother [the
Church] and daughter [the C.M.S.] disagree,
I must be forgiven for taking the mother's

HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN 75

side ! But it is sometimes not so much
the daughter as the daughter's sons ! — I
am afraid — only a very few of them,
happily." And again, after he had left
India :

" My last sigh and pang of agony will
be for the miserably small and frivolous
strifes which fritter away our strength on
such trifles as eastward and northern posi
tion, mixing of the wine with water, the
bishop's pastoral staff, etc. If it were
questions like Virgin-worship, or bowing
down to adore the elements, then we are
on ground worthy of our steel ; but the
sooner we have done .with these childish
contentions about airy nothings, so much
the better for the Truth and the worse for
Rome."

On one occasion he took a quite un
expected course. In 1883 the Bishops of
the Province of India and Ceylon assembled
for conference at Calcutta. There were
Bishops Johnson of Calcutta, Mylne of
Bombay, and Copleston of Colombo, who
were regarded as definitely " High " ; Cald-

76 HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN

well of Tinnevelly and Strachan of Rangoon,
S.P.G. missionaries of an older type; Gell
of Madras, Sargent of Tinnevelly, Speechly
of Travancore, distinctly Evangelical; and
French. They adopted a series of resolu
tions on certain Church questions, and
issued a " Letter ... to all of every race
and religion " in India. French had to
leave Calcutta before the letter was finally
drawn up, and, as he had thus no oppor
tunity to move the insertion of some
additional clauses, he refused to let his
name be appended to it. The letter rested
the claims of the Church of England upon
its " Apostolical Order." French thought
that a threefold base should have been
mentioned, viz., " Evangelical Truth, Apos
tolical Order, and Working Power and
Usefulness." It was a notable illustration
of his independence of mind that he should
withhold his signature from a document
which had been adopted by a body of
Bishops of such varied theological views.

Strong Churchman as French was, he
could hold true fellowship with the Pres
byterians and other non-Anglicans in the

HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN 77

diocese. When some of the C.M.S. men
mistrusted him, he wrote, " My dear Pres
byterian brethren understand me better."
Mr. Forman, the veteran American Pres
byterian, said, " If Bishops could be like
Bishop French, we should all be ready
to be Episcopalians." Another venerable
member of the same Church, an Indian
minister, the Rev. Golak Nath, asked him
to preach to his congregation : ic I told
him I was prevented by strict Church
rules from so doing, but on another visit,
when less pressed, I should consent to have
a prayer- meeting with them, and do it
with pleasure. I also promised to preach
with him in the bazaar."

But all questions of Church order and
ritual, and even of dogmatic theology,
were to Bishop French secondary to the
one supreme question of personal religion.
That, he considered, was the real charac
teristic of the old Evangelicalism to which
he still clung. An extract from an account
of him by Bishop Edward Bickersteth of
Japan, who had been the founder of the
Cambridge Delhi Mission, and had some-

78 HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN

times acted as his chaplain, will show a
little of his private religious life.

" Emphatically he was among those who

followed the apostolic model in giving

themselves to prayer as well as the ministry

of the word. ' We will keep that room,

please, as an oratory : we shall need the

help,' I can remember his saying when

we reached a dak bungalow where we were

to spend two or three days. Those of us

who, as a rule, prefer written to extempore

prayers would probably have made an

exception in favour of the Bishop's, largely

composed as they were of scriptural phrases

linked together with great brevity and

skill. At times he carried fasting so far as

to weaken his strength for the work which

had immediately to be done. He studied

with care, and made frequent use of the

chief devotional manuals. His love of

hymns was intense. Like other saintly

souls, he found in them the greatest support,

and, though he was not a musician, and

found difficulty in keeping the time, would

insist on singing them on his journeys.

"No one could be with him long without
knowing that he was in the society of one

HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN 79

who lived in familiar intercourse with the
great minds alike of the past and present.
Like S. Charles Borromeo and John Wes
ley, he pursued his studies unweariedly on
his journeys. ... In the years that 1 was
his chaplain, the Gallican divines, Dupan-
loup, Perreyve, Gratry, etc., claimed his
attention increasingly. . . . Among the
Schoolmen, he set store on the judgment
of Aquinas. Dorner was the modern theo
logian whom he held to have penetrated
deepest into the great mysteries of the
faith."

But the man is best revealed by his
letters ; and it would be hard to find in
any biography letters " more delightful in
every way than those which Mr. Birks
selected out of a vast number to print in
the Life. They could hardly, however,
be appreciated from such very brief ex
tracts as might be included in these pages ;
and it will be best not to attempt to illus
trate in that way his personal friendships
and the intimacies of family life. It will
be more germane to the subject of this
chapter to copy three or four paragraphs

80 HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN

in which he, according to his custom,
briefly indicated to his wife and children
the topics of sermons he had preached :

Easter Day, April 13, 1879.—" This morn
ing I dwelt, in Hindustani, before a won
derful congregation of native Christians
— some 200, of whom 75 were confirmed
yesterday; and over 160 were present at
the Lord's Table this morning — on the
destruction of Pharaoh's host in the Red
Sea as the appropriate type of the open
tomb of the Lord Jesus, round about
which are strewn the corpses of the for
given, obliterated, and subdued sins of
His people, as set forth in Micah vii., not
forgetting Rev. xv."

Easter Day, Rawal Pindi, April 17,
1881. — " It is a sight to see the churches
in Peshawar and Rawal Pindi, the number
of soldiers and officers. In this place there
has been almost every officer at the Holy
Communion to-day at the two morning
services. I dwelt on Jesus Christ as the
Beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
that in all things He might have the pre
eminence. ... I showed how all our
beginnings of good, of resisting evil, were

HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN 81

embraced in Christ as ' the Beginning,'
and how all was from the victory of His
cross and the power of His resurrection. . . .
My heart rejoiced in delivering this blessed
message."

Ferozepore, November 8, 1884. — " This
morning I am speaking of the two appear-
ings, or Epiphanies, from Titus ii. 11, 12,
the Epiphany of Grace which began the
work of God in us and in all His people,
and the Epiphany of Glory which com
pletes it ! What a beautiful, gladdening
teaching is this ! "

Lahore, St. Stephen's Day, December 26,
1886. — •" This morning I took, after long
preparation, a new text, Isa. xxviii. 5, 6,
trying to show how, in spite of all the
lowliness of the manger of Bethlehem,
Christ Incarnate had been seen to His
saints in all ages as ' the crown of glory
and diadem of beauty ' — to St. Stephen,
to St. Paul before Nero, to Bishop Hanning-
ton and his little band of fellow- martyrs
in Uganda — to many in high and low
places, as St. Louis IX., Elizabeth of
Hungary, Alfred the Great."

After reading passages like these, we can
6

82 HIS POSITION AS A CHURCHMAN

better understand how distasteful to him
must have been controversies on the ex
ternals of ritual and the like. His soul
lived in a far higher atmosphere.

CHAPTER VIII

JOURNEYS AND VISITS, EAST AND WEST

TN reviewing Bishop French's work in
the Diocese of Lahore, we did not
wander beyond the bounds of his juris
diction. But he was not actually in the
diocese during the whole ten years of his
episcopate. From March 1883 to September
1884 he was absent. He had received
from the C.M.S. an earnest request that
he would visit Persia, and execute the
office of a Bishop in its Mission there ; and,
as he was taking furlough after six years'
hard work in the diocese, he determined
to return to England that way. The Bishop
of London, who claimed whatever juris
diction was possible over a branch of the
Church in a foreign country like Persia,
sent him a formal commission for the
purpose.

83

84 JOURNEYS AND VISITS

The C.M.S. Mission in Persia had been
established by Dr. Robert Bruce, who was
engaged in revising Henry Martyn's Persian
New Testament, and had baptized a few
Mohammedan Persians ; and, although he
avoided proselytising from the Armenian
Church, as a Roman Mission was doing,
two or three hundred Armenians who were
tired of their ignorant and often immoral
priests, and had no wish to join the Roman
Church, had put themselves under his
purer teaching and induced him to open a
school for their children. Bishop French
had much sympathy and respect for the
ancient Churches of the East, as we shall
see by and by ; but he felt bound to
recognise the facts of the case in Persia.
At Julfa, therefore, the Armenian suburb
of Ispahan, where Bruce was carrying on
his work, he confirmed sixty- seven candi
dates, and ordained a native pastor for
the congregation, the Rev. Minasakan
George. He thus wrote of the ordina
tion:

" It was a scene and a service I can

EAST AND WEST 85

never forget. I preached in Persian for
nearly an hour, and fair facility and fluency
were given me, thank God. I took for
text, ' In all things approving ourselves
as the ministers of Christ ... by the Holy
Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of
truth, by the power of God. . . .' Minas,
the old catechist (he must be fifty years
old), with grey hairs here and there upon
him, behaved with simple, quiet dignity.
He read the Gospel, and gave the cup to
the last row of communicants. The singing
was delightful in the Armenian tongue.
Among the hymns were 'The Church's
one foundation ' and ' Just as I am.'
One's heart does yearn over these dear
people."

It was with deep feeling that French
found himself in Persia at all ; and his
journals, which are most interesting, are
full of allusions to Henry Martyn. He
landed at Bushire on Easter Day, which
happened to fall that year (1883) on
March 25, thus coinciding with Lady Day.
His biographer notes the fact that Henry
Martyn, in 1811, left India on March 25,

86 JOURNEYS AND VISITS

and had his first glimpse of the Persian
coast on Easter Day. At Shiraz, the city
where Martyn suffered so acutely from
the reproaches and blasphemies of the
mullahs, French experienced a very friendly
reception, and found great readiness to hear
the Gospel :

" Thank God for some most interesting
conversations on the great truths of the
kingdom of God, the death and burial of
Christ, the atonement, or kafara, the second
coming, etc. It is surprising to see how
much is admitted, and apparently in some
assurance of faith. The Lord does seem
to have His own everywhere. They did
not attempt to set up Mohammed against
Christ. . . . The Word and Son of God,
His eternal oneness with the Father, seemed
to present no difficulty. . . .

"A general in the army and a sheikh
called and sat a long time. They both
wanted copies of the Bible, specially of
Isaiah and Daniel, after what I told them
of Cyrus and Darius from those books."

French also sought friendly intercourse

EAST AND WEST 87

with the Armenian Bishops and priests.
His whole heart went out in brotherly
sympathy with these ancient Churches, so
long oppressed by their Moslem rulers,
and which, though scarcely ever attempting
to preach the Gospel to the Mohammedans,
did by their very existence bear a silent
testimony to Christ. But, with all his large-
heartedness, and his keen sense ot every
link with the early Church, he found little
to encourage him in his friendly attitude.
Oriental Christendom has never taken
kindly to Western influence.

It should here be added that the C.M.S.
Persia Mission, then carried on by Bruce
only, with Dr. Hoernle as medical missionary,
has since been largely developed, four
chief cities having been occupied, and a
considerable number of Persian Moslems
baptized. It was joined in 1894 by Bishop
E. C. Stuart, French's comrade in India
forty years earlier, who gave up his New
Zealand diocese — as French had given up
his Indian diocese — to take up direct
missionary work again. Persia has lately
(1912) been made a missionary diocese,

88 JOURNEYS AND VISITS

with Dr. Stileman, an experienced mission
ary, as the first Bishop.

After three months in Persia, Bishop
French left the country by the Caspian
route, and, travelling via Moscow, St.
Petersburg, and Berlin, reached England
early in July. While at home he fulfilled
not a few important and interesting func
tions. Before he became Bishop he had
read a paper on Missions at the Stoke
Church Congress in 1875, a masterpiece of
beautiful thought and writing ; and now
he read one at the Reading Congress of
1883, which led to some subsequent dis
cussion, owing to the freshness and boldness
of the views expressed in it. Instead of
boasting of the success achieved in the
mission field, he urged that the work of
the century called for " the deepest con
trition, humiliation, and genuine heartfelt
confession on the part of the labourers
for past neglects and defects," and he
pleaded for more " apostles." At once
an outcry arose that a Bishop was dis
paraging missionaries. It was forgotten
that French himself was a missionary. In

EAST AND WEST 89

fact, he was humbling himself as their
representative ; and when he called for
44 apostles " he named, as examples of what
he wanted, C.M.S. and C.E.Z.M.S. mis
sionaries, Bishop G. E. Moule, George Max
well Gordon, Robert Bruce, Miss Tucker,
etc.

He gave the address at the famous
annual missionary breakfast at Oxford ar
ranged by Canon Christopher, and found
two hundred young men " an inspiring
sight." The breakfast had not at that
time begun to attract the crowds of dons
as well as of undergraduates that are now
to be seen. He preached the C.M.S.
annual sermon at St. Bride's, and wrote
next day to his wife:

' It was a splendid congregation, almost
appalling from the mass which filled base
ment, galleries, and all. . . . The responses
of the congregation were like the murmurs
of the sea. . . . Alas ! I preached an hour
and ten minutes. ... I had to leave out
bits here and there. . . . The Archbishop
of Canterbury was present and gave the
final prayer and blessing."

90 JOURNEYS AND VISITS

The sermon was a really great one, on
Missions as in a sense priestly work, based
on the striking words of St. Paul in
Rom. xv. 16, where he calls himself the
" minister " (\tnovpyov) of Christ, " mini
stering " (itpovpyovvra) the Gospel, that the
" offering up " (irpoa-fopai) of the Gentiles
might be acceptable.*

October of that year saw French back at
Lahore, and, as we have seen, he had three
years more of episcopal service. He left
India finally on January 5, 1888 ; but
not to return direct to England. After
so short a time of absence, how could the
soldier of the Cross go back at once to wife
and family ? There were two sections of
Asiatics over whom his heart yearned,
viz. the Oriental Christians and the Mo
hammedans : why should he not make a
missionary journey to visit those in Syria
and Mesopotamia, as he had already visited
those in Persia ? He sailed accordingly
from Karachi up the Persian Gulf to
Bussorah ; and during more than a year
he was travelling between Babylon, Bagdad,

* See further on this text, page 121.

EAST AND WEST 91

Mosul, Aleppo, Beyrout, Jerusalem, etc.
Of this tour the next chapter will tell.
At last he turned his face homewards,
and reached England in April 1889.

Even then he could not be idle. He
often travelled to various parts of the
country in the interest of both S.P.G. and
C.M.S., and took the opportunity to pay
visits to Bishops and other friends, enjoying
much the company of Bishop G. H. Wilkin
son at Truro, Bishop Lightfoot at Durham,
and Bishop Christopher Wordsworth at
Lincoln. From time to time he had his
share in church functions : for instance,
he joined in the laying, on of hands when
Bishop Tucker of Uganda and Bishop
Hodges of Travancore were consecrated at
Lambeth. Still, he did at this time allow
himself to enjoy a little of the sweets of
family life. For he was ever a devoted
husband and father, although he regarded
himself as definitely called of God to this
and that service abroad which involved
long separation from those he loved so
dearly. Mr. Birks gives a brief but pic
turesque account of a visit to his mother's

92 JOURNEYS AND VISITS

house at Chigwell in Essex, which was paid
by the Bishop during a vacancy in the see
of St. Albans, to hold a confirmation :

" When he arrived on the Saturday,
before he could be hindered, he had plunged
half way upstairs with a heavy bag of
books, saying he ' would not break the
housemaid's back with it.' On the Sunday
morning he preached for the British Syrian
Schools from his favourite passage in
Zech. xiii., ' Awake, O sword,' and in the
afternoon he held the confirmation. Before
delivering his charge he knelt beside the
chancel steps and poured forth his heart
in every collect of the Prayer-book that
pleads for the presence and good gifts of
the Holy Ghost ; then he spoke fervently
about the seal of the Spirit impressing
on the heart the image of the Saviour's
love.

"The Bishop's blue bag, that he was so
loth to let another carry, his brisk and
energetic but somewhat jerky walk, due
to sore feet that often pained him greatly,
although he would not drive ; his interest
in all the work of others, his modesty
about his own ; his resolute redemption

EAST AND WEST 98

of the time for private study ; his un
willingness to lead the family worship,
and the comprehensiveness and beauty of
his prayers when at last he consented —
will long live in the memory."

Another reminiscence illustrates both the
physical vigour which he even yet possessed
and the readiness with which he faced
external inconveniences. Being in Northum
berland, he planned a visit to Lindisfarne,
" minding," like St. Paul at Troas, " himself
to go afoot," as a pilgrim, to the scenes
of the labours of St. Aidan and St. Cuth-
bert. Rain coming on, his son-in-law, the
Rev. E. A. Knox (now Bishop of Man
chester), ordered a carriage for the party ;
but, when they were starting, French was
missing, and they found that he had
already set off. Three or four miles on
the road they overtook him " in his shirt
sleeves, dripping wet, his coat over his
arm, trudging gallantly onwards." He
went through a day of sight-seeing in his
wet clothes, ending with a long train
journey to Whitby. "His pleasure," says

94 JOURNEYS AND VISITS

Mr. Birks, " in the scenes of St. Cuthbert's
and St. Aidan's ministries was so great
that it seemed to act as a preservative
against the rash exposure."

CHAPTER IX

AMONG THE EASTERN CHURCHES

A S we have already seen, Bishop French,
^*- on resigning his bishopric, did not
return direct to England, but was for
more than a year journeying about Meso
potamia and Syria. He encountered all
the difficulties of travel familiar to visitors
to those lands who go far off the tourist
routes ; and they cannot have been rendered
less troublesome than usual by his carrying
with him " a small representative library of
all sorts of books almost, except high
mathematics and novels ! ' But he was
quite ready to brave heat and cold, dust
and damp, caravanserais " not so clean as
in Persia" (he said), poor food, and so on,
if he could get into touch with Mohamme
dans, Jews, and Oriental Christians in
their actual daily life, and talk with them

95

96 AMONG THE EASTERN CHURCHES

about the Lord Who died for them.
" Several passages out of the Gospels,"
he wrote, " on our Lord's life and work,
I was able to comment upon as we rode
along, and where we stopped for an hour
to get a cup of tea." With his ripe learning,
his facility with languages, his historic
instincts, his wide sympathies, his readiness
to be servant of all men, his ardent love
for his one Lord and Master, he found
abundant opportunities of useful intercourse
with Nestorian and Armenian and Jacobite
and Greek ecclesiastics, with American
Presbyterian missionaries, and with Moslems
of both Turkish and Arabic race ; and he
frequently ministered in the churches of
the various Christian communions. At some
places, as in India, he gave lectures on
the Uganda Mission. One extract from
his letters must be given as a specimen of
his visits to Arabs :

" Darkness overtook us ... but, seeing
the lights of a wild Arab hamlet by the
roadside, whose name I did not learn, if
it has a name at all, we threw ourselves

AMONG THE EASTERN CHURCHES 97

on the hospitality of the villagers, and got
a little single-roomed house placed at our
disposal, all but the zenana part screened
by a sort of screen of straw- plaiting,
where the good lady and her children
secreted themselves. But these Arab ladies
are most obliging sometimes, bring their
children to be looked at, ask about my
sons and daughters, and elicit my small
stock of Arabic colloquial — 1 never forget
the bakshish of course. Their behaviour
is respectful, and even dignified, yet with
a freedom of converse which surprises me.
. . . They soon had a fire lit, coffee roasted,
ground, then boiled, and poured into cups
like dolls' cups, and handed round with
some fresh baked bread and the ' sour
kraut ' of curdled milk. For a couple of
hours the Arab host and his friends sat
and listened to stories from a passing
traveller, the lady standing, like Sarah, at
the tent-door and taking all in with curious
interest. I said to the orator, ' Now you
have regaled us with feats of war, suppose
you tell us a story out of the history of
Abraham.' He confessed to profound ig
norance on the subject ; so I summoned
what Arabic I could, and told of the

98 AMONG THE EASTERN CHURCHES

offering of Isaac and God's promises to
him, with some teachings on the great
account to be rendered before the judgment-
seat of Christ."

The ancient Christian Churches every
where called forth his especial interest and
sympathy. He attended their services,
knelt to receive the Holy Communion at
their altars, and took infinite pains to explain
to their Bishops and priests the true position
of the Church of England. When asked
by them what sort of Christian he called
himself, his reply was, "Katulik la Papa-
viya " (Catholic, not Papal), a formula which
he constantly repeated because the Roman
missionaries, who were numerous every
where, persistently branded all, Eastern
or Western, who did not submit to the
Pope as " uncatholic." They had been
successful in attaching to the Latin Com
munion sections of the Syrian and Chaldean
Churches, " aided by French prestige and
influence " ; but there were still consider
able sections that clung to their ancient
independence. French attended the ser
vices of all the different bodies. He was

AMONG THE EASTERN CHURCHES 99

often received courteously even by the
Romans themselves : for instance, he was
invited by Carmelite nuns at Bagdad to
examine their school-girls. Always on the
look-out for Christian heroes, he went to
see the tomb, at a place called Mariaco, of
Pere Besson, a famous Dominican mis
sionary, who, he wrote, was " a kind of
Henry Marty n of the Roman Church,"
who had been Pio Nono's chief painter at
the Vatican, but " gave up all for Christ "
to go out as a missionary to the East.
4 I think," he said, " the Latins are far
less bigoted than in Europe, though Mari-
olatry is much the same " ; and he
lamented the introduction of images into
the churches, as likely to repel the Mo
hammedans.

An example of French's readiness for
fellowship with all Christians may be taken
from a Sunday spent at Mosul. First, he
" attended Jacobite mass." " The prayers
seemed full of Christ; the Virgin's name I
caught once or twice, but not the connexion
in which it came. I begged to receive the
elements kneeling, and both were brought

100 AMONG THE EASTERN CHURCHES

to me by the officiating priest." At noon
he was present at a Bible-class of the
American Presbyterians, and " said a few
words." In the afternoon he " attended a
service of prayer and song in the fine Latin
cathedral of the Dominicans." In the
evening he " attended the American ser
vice." From Bagdad he wrote:

" An old Chaldean Christian member
sits several hours a day with me, and I
translate Spurgeon's sermons with him,
and read the Arabic Bible with an Arabic
work of controversy written in Spain by
a Christian doctor about A.D. 870, and
edited by Sir W. Muir. The Christians
come to my room and have a little talk in
Arabic ; and I managed to read a lesson
in church this morning and to give the
benediction."

It is curious to find that a " little purple
apron " which had been sent out to him
was " a great help, as it is the recognised
Eastern Bishop's dress." Of one Jacobite
church, at Diarbekir, he wrote quite enthu
siastically :

AMONG THE EASTERN CHURCHES 101

" My heart was full of joy at the store
of Scripture read out so eloquently and
with such expressiveness — the later history
of Samson, Hosea xiv., the Philippi history
of St. Paul. Most full of joy at the sermon,
which was a rich treat of evangelical
marrow and fatness. A Puritan would
have heard it with glistening eyes. Christ,
and Christ only, was the Good Samaritan ;
then, earnest exhortations to come to Him.
A fine congregation, one-third women, all
on the ground."

Bishop French avowed that he began
his tour somewhat prejudiced against the
American missionaries,- as representing a
policy of proselytism from the ancient
Churches ; but in one of his long letters
to Archbishop Benson he said that he
" found witness borne on all hands to the
remarkable stirring and awakening which
their schools and public services and minis
tries, with the large circulation of the Holy
Scriptures, had brought about among several
of the Churches of the East." "Both
at Mosul and at Mardin," he wrote in
another letter, " I have felt compelled to

102 AMONG THE EASTERN CHURCHES

break my rule of not speaking in other
than Church of England places of worship,
and have addressed their large flocks,
having the missionary for my interpreter.
In these wildernesses of the world, at least,
I can scarcely think I should be blamed."
He was glad to hear of the Archbishop's
Mission to the Assyrian Christians, which
was just then beginning its work. He
wrote long letters to Benson on the whole
position, which were afterwards printed
in the Report on Missions issued by the
United Boards of Missions in 1894.

Mesopotamia, of course, presented much
besides the Eastern Churches to interest
a scholar like French. He was keen to
examine the ruins of Babylon and Nine
veh, and he was fortunate in meeting " a
Mr. Budge, of the British Museum," whom
he refers to as "a young and vigorous
traveller " who " reads off cuneiform in
scriptions like English " ; apparently in
ignorance of the European reputation to
which Dr. Wallis Budge was then already
attaining. But he viewed the ancient re
mains in a spirit very unlike that of the

AMONG THE EASTERN CHURCHES 103

casual tourist. For instance, he wrote from
Babylon :

" A good part of to-day has been spent
in examining the mounds of Nebuchad
nezzar's palace, standing on its height,
and trying to picture the time when he
stood on its parapets and exclaimed, ' Is
not this great Babylon which I have
built ? ' and then, when the discipline
was complete, made his lowly confession
of faith : ' Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise,
extol, and honour the king of heaven.'
The willows along the Euphrates banks
touchingly reminded one of the harps of
the captive Jews hung on the willows.
To imagine Belshazza'r's boisterous and
guilty carousals in the midst of such un
broken silence was difficult, or to think of
Alexander dying there in the full tide of
his conquests over the world, except him
self, his own lusts and passions."

After several months so spent, French
came into Palestine towards the end of
the year. He was delighted to spend the
Christmas of 1888 at Bethlehem, with Miss
Jacombs, of the Female Education Society

104 AMONG THE EASTERN CHURCHES

(afterwards of the C.M.S.). He conducted
the service, and preached on " When the
fulness of the time was come," etc., in
Gal. iv., especially on the words, " Because
ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit
of His Son into your hearts." Of the Rev.
Chalil Jamal, the C.M.S. native clergyman
at Salt, he wrote one of his highly charac
teristic descriptions :

" Mr. Jamal is something like Bishop
Dupanloup, I should say, in his excellence
in catechising ; a real lamp burning and
shining in the midst of the wild Bedawin
of the lower ranges of the Moab hills.
He is a little Elisha up there, minus the
she-bears, though his rough hairy dress
almost calls Elijah's to mind."

On April 17, the Wednesday in Holy
Week, he once more arrived in England,
for the last time.

CHAPTER X

HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA

"DISHOP FRENCH could not settle
•*-* down in England. He hungered for
fresh work of a more definite kind ; and
to the East he must go. But whither ?
At that time there were strained relations
between Bishop Blyth of Jerusalem and the
C.M.S. ; and French -much wished to be
instrumental in bringing about more cordial
co-operation between them in the work
which both were doing in Palestine. First
he thought of becoming a kind of roving
commissioner for the Society with which he
had kept so long and happy a connexion as
a missionary. Then, on the other hand, he
thought of putting his experience, as a Bishop
who had been obliged to deal with various
Church parties, at Bishop Blyth's disposal in
some unofficial way. But neither scheme

106

106 HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA

proved to be practicable ; and then French's
ardent spirit took a wider flight, and
after study, inquiry, and prayer, he dedi
cated himself to missionary service as
a free-lance pioneer in the hitherto
most inaccessible of Mohammedan lands
— Arabia.

He had been deeply interested in a re
markable article by Alexander Mackay of
Uganda, which appeared in the C.M. In
telligencer of January 1889, entitled "Muscat,
Zanzibar, and Central Africa." Zanzibar,
prior to the German occupation which
preceded the British Protectorate, had been
a dependency of the Sultan of Oman, in
Eastern Arabia, whose capital was Muscat.
From Muscat came many of the Mohamme
dan traders who so vehemently opposed
Mackay's work and influence in Uganda ;
and they used to say to him, " Ah, you
come and convert the Uganda people, who
are idol- worshippers ; you never tried to
convert us at Muscat ! ' Mackay, with
his usual far-seeing statesmanship, urged
in his article that Moslem influence should
be attacked at its headquarters by the

HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA 107

establishment of a C.M.S. Mission at Muscat ;
and Bishop French, for the fifth time under
taking the role of a pioneer, resolved to go
there himself, and perhaps prepare the way
tor the Society. It was an heroic venture
for a man of sixty-five, already strained
with much travelling and increasing studies
and labours ; but French, as we now
know, was of the stuff of which heroes are
made.

He left England on November 3, 1890—
never to return ; went first to Tunis and
Egypt ; thence to Bombay and Karachi —
the only way of reaching Muscat ; and
arrived at Muscat itself on February 8,
1891. " I being in the way," he wrote,
" the Lord led me," like Abraham's servant.
At Tunis, and at the sacred Moslem city of
Kairowan, and at Alexandria and Cairo,
he seized every opportunity of improving,
and using in Christ's cause, his colloquial
Arabic. He could not see, he wrote, inter
preting the " tongues " of the Corinthian
Church as standing for varied languages,
that he had any right to let his life's work
at tongues go to waste, " in spite of St.

108 HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA

Paul's deprecation of them in comparison with
charity." With the same object, instead
of taking a P. & O. mail-boat to Bombay,
he sailed from Suez in a Turkish coasting
steamer that was going to the various
ports on both sides of the Red Sea, Jedda,
Suakin, Massowa, Hodaida, and so to Aden,
where he visited the grave of Ion Keith-
Falconer, the devoted pioneer of the Free
Church of Scotland, who had left his
Cambridge Arabic Professorship to start
that Church's Arabian Mission, and had
died after a few months' work. From
Aden he had to take the mail-steamer to
Bombay, and thence to come back to
Karachi. It was from that port that he
had finally left his Indian diocese three
years before ; and he would not land,
but stayed on board the small Persian
Gulf steamer — not in very pleasant en
vironment : " Arabs, Persians, and Hindus
are my brother- passengers, who cook their
food as well as eat it in the saloon, and
its scents at least are not savoury if its
composites are; the chief advantage being
that I hear Arabic spoken incessantly

HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA 109

and loudly, and so a succession of munshis
keep me primed for my next preachings."
He would take the second-class saloon
even in so inferior a boat, but, " finding
the Arab horse-dealers too overpowering,"
he was forced, against his will, to transfer
himself to the first class, such as it was.
Happily he had a companion with him in
the person of the Rev. A. C. Maitland, of
the S.P.G. Delhi Mission, who had been
one of his clergy in the Lahore diocese,
and had joined him in Egypt. Mr. Mait
land was himself almost an invalid, and
this was an advantage in one sense, as
for his sake French refrained from reckless
doings in which he might otherwise have
indulged.

They landed at Muscat on February 8.
The Bishop would not accept hospitality
from the British Political Agent, Colonel
Mockler, as he wished neither to com
promise the Government of India by his
missionary proceedings nor to give ground
for any prejudice against him on the part
of the Arabs as representing a foreign
power. They therefore had some difficulty

110 HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA

in finding a roof to shelter them. Mr.
Maitland wrote :

" At last a Hindu merchant got a Goanese
half-caste to take us in ; so we went back
and got our baggage from the steamer,
and settled ourselves as well as we could
in a longish room, very dirty, with one
charpoy in it, a broken couch, and a number
of chairs. . . . We got a kettle boiled and
some coffee and biscuits. Later we got
some chapatis and milk from the bazaar."

But the house turned out to be a Portu
guese grog-shop for the Arabs ! whereupon
French accepted the offer, from the American
consul, of a house at Muttra, a large town
three miles off by boat :

" Mr. Mackinly sent a servant to put us
into the house, who got it swept out a
bit, arranged with a bihisti to bring us
water daily, and a woman to supply us
with milk, went with me to the bazaar to
buy some sugar, candles, etc., and then had
to return to Muscat, and we were left
monarch (and attendant) of all we sur
veyed. Luckily there were some degehies

HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA 111

(cooking- pots) and plenty of cups and
plates in the house. I had bought two
teaspoons and a rusty knife in Muscat,
and got three more tin spoons in Muttra.
Excellent Persian bread was to be bought
close by, so I boiled the kettle and made
some tea, and we dined. We were to have
had evensong together afterwards, but the
place was so dirty (not having been occupied
for seven or eight months), and I took so
long washing up, and getting a clean place
to put the things, that — well, evensong
was not said together."

These are trivialities, but they are realities,
and help our conceptions of the Bishop's
life. Mr. Maitland, however, had to leave
after a week or two to return to Delhi ;
and French himself wrote little of this
kind, but kept a full journal of his inter
course with the people and efforts to preach
Christ to them, which is deeply interesting,
but of which only a few brief passages can
be quoted :

" Difficulties and hindrances abound. Mus
cat is full of mosques, and they are fairly

112 HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA

well attended by women as well as men,
more so than in any other Mohammedan
city I have seen."

" I cannot say that I have met with
many thoughtful and encouraging hearers
or people who want Bibles and Testaments ;
there is much holding aloof, and even
occasionally of bitter and angry oppo
sition. The Arabs seem, on the whole, the
most quiet and thoughtful hearers. I must
at least thank God that even the first
fortnight I have been able to secure so
much of patient attention and real opening
up of the great truths of the Gospel."

'l Colonel Mockler still does all he can
to dissuade my selecting Muscat for a
centre."

" Two days ago a large party of Arabs
(ladies and gentlemen, the former standing,
the latter sitting) made almost a dead set
at me to induce me to turn Mohammedan.
It was a new experience to me, but useful
as enabling me better to understand the
feeling an Arab or Hindu would have in
being so approached with a view to changing
a faith dear to him as life itself, and so
with the Moslems it usually is."

" Happily we have the promise for Arabia
twice repeated by name in the 72nd Psalm

HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA 113

(P. B. Version). Was it that which took
St. Paul so soon into Arabia ? ':

" Beyond all my expectations I am per
mitted to witness here to companies of
educated and thoughtful Arab sheikhs and
their followers. Last evening I sat an
hour in a circle of them, going through
many of the most vital Gospel truths,
and listened to with marked attention and
seriousness. ... I began by speaking of
the coming kingdom of God and Christ,
reading David's words in 2 Sam. xxiii.
Then, from Isa. xxxv. and Ps. Ixxii., I
showed some of the characteristic features
of this kingdom, and how the kings of
Arabia and Seba should bring gifts. Then
the way was open for further reference to
the kingdom of Christ as set up in the
heart, being in effect a new creation through
repentance and death to sin with Christ,
and resurrection with Him to a higher and
holier life. Many questions they asked as
to prayers and pilgrimages ; what I thought
of Mohammed and the Koran ; what would
become of the drunkard and the fornicator
in the coming kingdom : in answer to
which I read much of Rev. xxi. and xxii.,
which seemed to strike them much."

"A long afternoon in the town. Some
8

114 HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA

solemn and serious preachings in com
panies of educated people. They cost a
great effort, and I had to throw myself
on God's help to carry me through. I was
thus able to speak with some authority
which God gave me, and with pointed
appeals. It is chiefly in coffee-shops that
these gatherings take place."

" A still more hopeful day than yes
terday. . . . Sitting by an old wall, I had
a long conversation with some ten or
twelve adults and a few intelligent boys.
Went carefully through St. John iii. and
Rom. vi. . . . As the sea was too rough for
a small boat to return at 2 p.m., I sat by
the roadside in a quiet street reading my
New Testament ; but a neighbouring Arab
gentleman came out, and, with polite cour
tesy, beckoned me to come into his house.
He had coffee and refreshments brought, and
I read him and his friends some Scripture
portions."

" Oppressed with weariness and hot wind
to-day, but forced myself out, and was
more than rewarded by two quite lengthened
opportunities of opening up some of the
grandest truths of the Gospel. A venerable
and dignified old teacher, or sheik, came
out and took part with much gravity and

HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA 115

quiet intelligence, and rebuked a very
virulent African whose resistance to the
Gospel was most bitter, though intensely
ignorant."

On Easter Day, March 29, he held a
service at Muscat itself for a congregation
of four persons, including Colonel and Mrs.
Mockler, who received the Holy Communion
with him :

" The thoughts of the day and its glorious
truths had so possessed me that I was
able to enjoy the subject, ' Reckon your
selves to be dead indeed unto sin, but
alive unto God.' We had two hymns,
4 Jesus Christ is risen to-day,' and ' Oh,
what the joy ! ' "

Meanwhile he was making inquiries as
to the feasibility of a journey into the
interior, and at last found an Arab who
seemed an earnest inquirer, and who was
willing to go with him. On April 24 he
wrote to the author of this present volume,
summarising his work and prospects, and
adding, with reference to that Arab, " I

116 HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA

have sung my Te Deum for him." At last,
on May 5, he started in an open boat for
Sib, a village some thirty miles distant,
whence he would try and go inland.

On that same day, May 5, 1891, the
annual meeting of the C.M.S. was being
held in Exeter Hall. The letter just re
ferred to did not reach England till a fort
night later, but it showed that he had not
forgotten what was going on in London :

" I am asking a special blessing for your
May meetings and services. . . . The Arch
bishop will be at his best, I trust, and
directed what to say for the glory of Christ
and the good of His Church and the Society's
highest interests."

Archbishop Benson was, in fact, the chief
speaker that day, and referred sympatheti
cally to Bishop French. So did the Presi
dent in the chair, Sir John Kennaway :

44 We desire to send forth a message of
tender, strong sympathy, encouragement,
and support to those of our brethren in
distant lands who are holding the fort or

HIS FIFTH PIONEER WORK : ARABIA 117

carrying the war into the enemy's country
. . . and to cheer the heart of that
old veteran, Thomas Valpy French, who,
in the fortieth year of his missionary
service, unsupported so far as human help
goes, is attacking the seemingly impregnable
fortress of Islam in the eastern parts of
Arabia."

CHAPTER XI

THE HOME CALL — AND AFTER

"OUT it was not to be. Bishop French
-*^ was already weakened by fever, and
at Sib he broke down altogether. With
deep reluctance he allowed himself to be
taken back to Muscat, where he was attended
by Dr. Jayaker, an Indian surgeon in the
service of the British Government. Against
his wish, he was moved, almost unconscious,
to the Residency, where he was kindly
received by Colonel Mockler. He was be
yond writing ; indeed, his last letter home
had been posted on May 3, two days before
he left for Sib. He quickly sank, and
died at noon on the 14th.

The last offices were performed by Chris
tians, Goanese Roman Catholics who had
heard of him ; and their whole small
community attended the funeral the same

118

THE HOME CALL— AND AFTER 119

evening. The coffin was covered with the
British flag, and the service was read by
Colonel Mockler.

Mr. Maitland went to Muscat in the
following September, and obtained the
details of the Bishop's last days on earth.
" The first telegram," he wrote, " gave
sunstroke as the cause of death ; . . . but
it has gradually come home to me that it
was not sunstroke, and a conversation I
had with Dr. Jayaker . . . confirms the idea
that death was due, not to any special
stroke, but to the effects of the great heat
upon the Bishop's enfeebled constitution,
which produced exhaustion, and then failure
of the brain, and finally of the heart. . . .
The whole task he attempted was beyond
his physical powers. He attempted a mode
of life which would have taxed a young
man's strength in a climate that crushed
him."

The little Christian cemetery at Muscat
is most picturesquely situated at the foot
of almost perpendicular cliffs rising from
a little cove, and is reached by boat, by
rounding a rocky point to the south of the

120 THE HOME CALL— AND AFTER

city ; " a wild, barren spot, but not alto
gether arid." An Indian chaplain who
visited the place two or three years later
found " three trees, out of the very few
Muscat can boast of, in full leaf," also
" a shrub, a kind of broom, with smooth
green leaves and pink flowers." A wooden
cross had been put up temporarily by
Colonel Mockler, but a permanent tomb
of white Jaipur marble was afterwards
erected, with a recumbent cross. The in
scription simply gives the name, office,
and date, and two texts in English and
Arabic, viz. : " Except a corn of wheat,"
etc., and " Even as the Son of Man came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister,
and to give His life a ransom for many."
In the Cathedral at Lahore a brass was
put up with a fuller inscription, including
French's favourite text, on which he had
preached the C.M.S. annual sermon, and
also before the University of Cambridge :

" A minister of Jesus Christ to the
Gentiles, ministering the Gospel of God,
that the offering up of the Gentiles might

122 THE HOME CALL— AND AFTER

to be like Christ was his dearest desire.
" Not to be ministered unto, but to minis
ter " : no words could more truly describe
his life ; " minister " here (SiaKove'o)) being,
not officiating as a priest, but " serving "
God and man as a servant. And surely,
like his Divine Master, he was a " corn of
wheat " fallen into the earth and dying,
that it might bring forth much fruit.

That " fruit," however, was not to be
gathered, as French hoped, by the C.M.S.
or by any Church of England agency.
In the Turkish coasting steamer which
had taken him down the Red Sea was
another missionary passenger, Samuel W.
Zwemer, of the American (Dutch) Reformed
Church, who also was projecting a Mission
in Eastern Arabia. The Bishop took pos
session of the land by laying his weary body
under the cliffs of Muscat. Zwemer took
possession, in the happy providence of
God, by living and working on that wild
coast for many years, establishing a per
manent and important Mission He has
lost his brother, and other fellow-workers,
in the service of that Mission ; and, on the

THE HOME CALL— AND AFTER 123

other hand, by marrying an Australian
lady attached to the C.M.S. Mission at
Bagdad, he provided for the much-needed
work among the Arabian women. He is
now known all over the world as one of
the very first authorities on Missions to
Mohammedans. His book on Arabia, pub
lished in 1900, has become the classical
work on the subject. His quarterly review,
The Moslem World, is read with keen
interest in Europe and America.

While Bishop French was ending his
earthly career at Muscat, his old companion
and brother Bishop, Edward Craig Stuart,
who had gone to India with him in 1850
and shared in his earliest labours at Agra,
was ably and wisely administering the
diocese of Waiapu in New Zealand. But
the sequel is one of deep interest. Less
than a year after French's home-call, two
C.M.S. men go out to Australia and New
Zealand to stir up the Churches there to
take their part in the evangelisation of the
heathen world. To one of them — the
present biographer — Bishop Stuart opens

124 THE HOME CALL— AND AFTER

his heart. Should he not follow his old
comrade's example, give up his bishopric,
and devote his remaining days to preaching
Christ to the Mohammedans ? A learned
New Zealand missionary in Persia, Mr. St.
Clair Tisdall, sees in the C. M. Intelligencer
an account of the awakening of some
Christian hearts in his colonial home to
the claims of the heathen. He writes to
Bishop Stuart : Come to Persia ! That
letter is God's message ; and the Diocese
of Waiapu is called upon to bid farewell
to its Chief Pastor. Stuart comes to Eng
land, tells the C.M.S. circle at the May
meeting of 1894 of the Lord's call to him,
takes leave of the Society on the 44th
anniversary of the first sailing of himself
and French to India (September 11), and
starts the next day for Persia. And in
Persia he is permitted by the grace of
God to labour, with short intervals, for
over fifteen years ; until at last, in his
eighty-fourth year, he is brought to England
to die, and enters into rest on March 15,
1911. Thus, together French and Stuart
went in the name of the Lord to India ;

THE HOME CALL— AND AFTER 125

together they planned St. John's College ;
twenty- seven years later — within a few
weeks of each other — they were consecrated
Bishops in the Church of God ; each in
his turn gave up his bishopric to become
again a simple missionary ; each set him
self to make known the Gospel to the
Mohammedans of Western Asia ; and only
at the end was the parallel broken by one
outliving the other twenty years. Is there
any case quite like this in all Church
history ? And have we any nobler ex
amples of self -sacrificing devotion than are
furnished by the careers of Thomas Valpy
French and Edward Craig Stuart ?

Let us close our story with two utterances
of rare beauty. First, Bishop French's
own request for prayer sent from Muscat
to the band called " Watchers and Workers"
—a prayer, be it noted, not for himself, but
for the Arab race for whose evangelisation
he laid down his life :

" I long for the prayers of your little
band of intercessors offering this simple
request, that, as the Arab has been so

126 THE HOME CALL— AND AFTER

grievously a successful instrument in de
posing Christ from His throne (for this
long season only), in so many fair regions
of the East ... so the Arab may, in God's
good providence, be at least one of the
main auxiliaries and reinforcements in re
storing the Great King, and reseating Him
on David's throne of judgment and mercy,
and Solomon's throne of peace, and, above
all, God's throne of righteousness."

And, secondly, the fine poem in which
Archdeacon A. E. Moule commemorated the
heroic Bishop :

•Jn flDemorp of
THOMAS VALPY FRENCH

BISHOP MISSIONARY *

WHEBE Muscat fronts the Orient sun
'Twixt heaving sea and rocky steep,

His work of mercy scarce begun,
A saintly soul has fallen asleep :

Who conies to lift the Cross instead ?

Who takes the standard from the dead ?

' Church Missionary Intelligencer, July 1891, p. 510.

THE HOME CALL— AND AFTER 127

Where, under India's glowing sky,
Agra the proud, and strong Lahore,

Lift roof and gleaming dome on high,

His " seven- toned " tongue is heard no more :

Who comes to sound alarm instead ?

Who takes the clarion from the dead ?

Where white camps mark the Afghan's bound,

From Indus to Suleiman's range,
Through many a gorge and upland — sound

Tidings of joy divinely strange :
But there they miss his eager tread ;
Who comes to toil then for the dead ?

Where smile Cheltonian hills and dales,
Where stretches Erith down to shore

Of Thames, wood-fringed and fleck'd with sails,
His holy voice is heard no more.

Is it for nothing he is dead ?

Send forth your children in his stead !

Far from fair Oxford's groves and towers,

Her scholar Bishop dies apart ;
He blames the ease of cultured hours

In death's still voice that shakes the heart. '
Brave saint ! for dark Arabia dead !
I go to fight the fight instead !

O Eastern-lover from the West !

Thou hast out-soared these prisoning bars ;
Thy memory, on thy Master's breast,

Uplifts us like the beckoning stars.
We follow now as thou hast led ;
Baptize us, Saviour, for the dead !

A. E. M.

Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

BV 3277 F7S75 1913 TRIM

Stock, Eugene,

An heroic bishop 140736

BV 3277 F7S75 1913 TRIM

St oc k , Eug en e ,

An heroic bishop 140736

F